Liberty Coal Energy (LBTG) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Coal
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Liberty Coal Energy (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Liberty Coal Energy is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
increasing commodity prices, technology disruption, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Liberty Coal Energy
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Liberty Coal Energy can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Liberty Coal Energy, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Liberty Coal Energy 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 Liberty Coal Energy can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Liberty Coal Energy
2. Improving business portfolio management of Liberty Coal Energy
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Coal sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Liberty Coal Energy
Strengths of Liberty Coal Energy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Liberty Coal Energy are -
Digital Transformation in Coal industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Liberty Coal Energy digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Liberty Coal Energy has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Organizational Resilience of Liberty Coal Energy
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Liberty Coal Energy does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Liberty Coal Energy has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Coal industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Liberty Coal Energy have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Liberty Coal Energy has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Liberty Coal Energy 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.
Learning organization
- Liberty Coal Energy is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Liberty Coal Energy is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Liberty Coal Energy emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Liberty Coal Energy in Coal industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Liberty Coal Energy in the Energy sector have low bargaining power. Liberty Coal Energy has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Liberty Coal Energy to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Liberty Coal Energy is one of the leading players in the Coal industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Strong track record of project management in the Coal industry
– Liberty Coal Energy is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Training and development
– Liberty Coal Energy has one of the best training and development program in Energy 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Liberty Coal Energy 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Liberty Coal Energy comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Coal 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.
Weaknesses of Liberty Coal Energy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Liberty Coal Energy are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Liberty Coal Energy is just above the Coal 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.
Skills based hiring in Coal industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Liberty Coal Energy has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Liberty Coal Energy is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Coal industry, but Liberty Coal Energy needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Liberty Coal Energy to focus more on services in the Coal industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Employees’ less understanding of Liberty Coal Energy strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Liberty Coal Energy don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Liberty Coal Energy, in the dynamic environment of Coal industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Liberty Coal Energy has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Liberty Coal Energy 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 Coal industry using digital technology.
Need for greater diversity
– Liberty Coal Energy 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Liberty Coal Energy needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Coal industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Liberty Coal Energy can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Liberty Coal Energy is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Coal industry, Liberty Coal Energy needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Liberty Coal Energy needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Coal industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Liberty Coal Energy 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 Coal industry.
Liberty Coal Energy Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Liberty Coal Energy are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Liberty Coal Energy has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Coal sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Liberty Coal Energy to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Liberty Coal Energy to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Liberty Coal Energy to increase its market reach. Liberty Coal Energy 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.
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. Liberty Coal Energy can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Liberty Coal Energy 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 Coal industry.
Manufacturing automation
– Liberty Coal Energy can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Coal sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Liberty Coal Energy can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Liberty Coal Energy operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Coal sector.
Developing new processes and practices
– Liberty Coal Energy can develop new processes and procedures in Coal industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Liberty Coal Energy can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help Liberty Coal Energy to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Liberty Coal Energy to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Liberty Coal Energy is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Liberty Coal Energy can utilize new technology in the field of Coal industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Liberty Coal Energy 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 Liberty Coal Energy to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Liberty Coal Energy 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Liberty Coal Energy in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Coal industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Threats Liberty Coal Energy External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Liberty Coal Energy are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Liberty Coal Energy high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Liberty Coal Energy demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in Coal industry and other sectors.
Environmental challenges
– Liberty Coal Energy 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. Liberty Coal Energy can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Coal industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Liberty Coal Energy can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the Coal industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Liberty Coal Energy may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Coal sector.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Liberty Coal Energy.
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. Liberty Coal Energy 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.
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 Liberty Coal Energy in the Coal sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Coal industry are lowering. It can presents Liberty Coal Energy with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Coal sector.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Coal industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Liberty Coal Energy can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Liberty Coal Energy is facing in Coal sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Liberty Coal Energy in Coal industry. The Coal 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Liberty Coal Energy Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Liberty Coal Energy 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 Liberty Coal Energy 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 Liberty Coal Energy 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 Liberty Coal Energy 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 Liberty Coal Energy needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
