Premier Gold Mines (PG) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Gold & Silver
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Premier Gold Mines (Canada)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Premier Gold Mines is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, technology disruption, increasing energy prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, geopolitical disruptions,
there is backlash against globalization, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Premier Gold Mines
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Premier Gold Mines can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Premier Gold Mines, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Premier Gold Mines operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Premier Gold Mines can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Premier Gold Mines
2. Improving business portfolio management of Premier Gold Mines
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Canada
4. Making a Gold & Silver sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Premier Gold Mines
Strengths of Premier Gold Mines | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Premier Gold Mines are -
Training and development
– Premier Gold Mines has one of the best training and development program in Basic Materials industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Strong track record of project management in the Gold & Silver industry
– Premier Gold Mines is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Premier Gold Mines has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Gold & Silver industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Premier Gold Mines have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Diverse revenue streams
– Premier Gold Mines is present in almost all the verticals within the Gold & Silver industry. This has provided Premier Gold Mines a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Premier Gold Mines has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Innovation driven organization
– Premier Gold Mines is one of the most innovative firm in Gold & Silver sector.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Premier Gold Mines comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Gold & Silver industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Premier Gold Mines has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Premier Gold Mines staying ahead in the Gold & Silver industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Analytics focus
– Premier Gold Mines is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Gold & Silver industry. The technology infrastructure of Canada is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
High brand equity
– Premier Gold Mines has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Premier Gold Mines to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Premier Gold Mines has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Premier Gold Mines has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Premier Gold Mines in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Premier Gold Mines has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Premier Gold Mines to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of Premier Gold Mines | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Premier Gold Mines are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Premier Gold Mines is one of the leading players in the Gold & Silver industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Gold & Silver industry in last five years.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Gold & Silver industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Canada, Premier Gold Mines is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the Gold & Silver industry.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Premier Gold Mines needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Gold & Silver industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Premier Gold Mines can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Premier Gold Mines is planning to shift buying processes online.
Need for greater diversity
– Premier Gold Mines has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Premier Gold Mines is just above the Gold & Silver industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Canada, Premier Gold Mines needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Premier Gold Mines has some of the most successful models in the Gold & Silver industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Premier Gold Mines should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Lack of clear differentiation of Premier Gold Mines products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Premier Gold Mines needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Premier Gold Mines has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the Gold & Silver industry using digital technology.
High dependence on Premier Gold Mines ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Premier Gold Mines still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Gold & Silver industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Premier Gold Mines has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Premier Gold Mines, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Gold & Silver industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Premier Gold Mines Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Premier Gold Mines are -
Loyalty marketing
– Premier Gold Mines has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Gold & Silver industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Premier Gold Mines can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Gold & Silver industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Premier Gold Mines in the Gold & Silver industry. Now Premier Gold Mines can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Premier Gold Mines has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Gold & Silver industry. This can help Premier Gold Mines to build a more holistic ecosystem for Premier Gold Mines products in the Gold & Silver industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Premier Gold Mines has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Gold & Silver sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Premier Gold Mines to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Premier Gold Mines to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Premier Gold Mines can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Premier Gold Mines operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Gold & Silver sector.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Premier Gold Mines can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Premier Gold Mines can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Gold & Silver industry.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Gold & Silver industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Premier Gold Mines can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Premier Gold Mines can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Premier Gold Mines can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Premier Gold Mines to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Premier Gold Mines to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Premier Gold Mines can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Premier Gold Mines to increase its market reach. Premier Gold Mines will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Threats Premier Gold Mines External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Premier Gold Mines are -
Increasing wage structure of Premier Gold Mines
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Premier Gold Mines.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Premier Gold Mines business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Gold & Silver industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Premier Gold Mines can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Gold & Silver industry are lowering. It can presents Premier Gold Mines with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Gold & Silver sector.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Premier Gold Mines has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Gold & Silver industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Premier Gold Mines needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Gold & Silver sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Environmental challenges
– Premier Gold Mines needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Premier Gold Mines can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Gold & Silver industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Premier Gold Mines in Gold & Silver industry. The Gold & Silver industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Premier Gold Mines needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Gold & Silver industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Premier Gold Mines in the Gold & Silver sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Premier Gold Mines will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Premier Gold Mines may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Gold & Silver sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Premier Gold Mines can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate Premier Gold Mines prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Premier Gold Mines Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Premier Gold Mines needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of Premier Gold Mines is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of Premier Gold Mines is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Premier Gold Mines to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Premier Gold Mines needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.