Royal Nickel Corporation (RNX) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Metal Mining
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Royal Nickel Corporation (Canada)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Royal Nickel Corporation is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, geopolitical disruptions,
increasing commodity prices, there is backlash against globalization, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Royal Nickel Corporation
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Royal Nickel Corporation can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Royal Nickel Corporation, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Royal Nickel Corporation 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 Royal Nickel Corporation can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Royal Nickel Corporation
2. Improving business portfolio management of Royal Nickel Corporation
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Canada
4. Making a Metal Mining sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Royal Nickel Corporation
Strengths of Royal Nickel Corporation | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Royal Nickel Corporation are -
Analytics focus
– Royal Nickel Corporation 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 Metal Mining 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 switching costs
– The high switching costs that Royal Nickel Corporation 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.
Digital Transformation in Metal Mining industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Royal Nickel Corporation digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Royal Nickel Corporation 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Royal Nickel Corporation is present in almost all the verticals within the Metal Mining industry. This has provided Royal Nickel Corporation 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Royal Nickel Corporation has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Royal Nickel Corporation staying ahead in the Metal Mining industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Royal Nickel Corporation has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Royal Nickel Corporation to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Organizational Resilience of Royal Nickel Corporation
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Royal Nickel Corporation does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Royal Nickel Corporation 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 Royal Nickel Corporation is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Royal Nickel Corporation emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Metal Mining industry
– Royal Nickel Corporation 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
– Royal Nickel Corporation has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Metal Mining industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Royal Nickel Corporation have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Royal Nickel Corporation is one of the most innovative firm in Metal Mining sector.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Royal Nickel Corporation is one of the leading players in the Metal Mining industry in Canada. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Canada. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Weaknesses of Royal Nickel Corporation | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Royal Nickel Corporation are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Canada, Royal Nickel Corporation needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Employees’ less understanding of Royal Nickel Corporation strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Royal Nickel Corporation 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Royal Nickel Corporation is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Royal Nickel Corporation to provide better information regarding Metal Mining products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Metal Mining industry, Royal Nickel Corporation 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Royal Nickel Corporation is one of the leading players in the Metal Mining industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Metal Mining industry in last five years.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Royal Nickel Corporation supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Royal Nickel Corporation is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Royal Nickel Corporation vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– Royal Nickel Corporation 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Royal Nickel Corporation has some of the most successful models in the Metal Mining industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Royal Nickel Corporation should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Royal Nickel Corporation has high operating costs in the Metal Mining industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Royal Nickel Corporation lucrative customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Royal Nickel Corporation is just above the Metal Mining 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Royal Nickel Corporation, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Metal Mining 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.
Royal Nickel Corporation Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Royal Nickel Corporation are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Royal Nickel Corporation can develop new processes and procedures in Metal Mining 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Royal Nickel Corporation 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.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Royal Nickel Corporation to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Metal Mining industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Royal Nickel Corporation in the Metal Mining industry. Now Royal Nickel Corporation can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Royal Nickel Corporation can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Royal Nickel Corporation operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Metal Mining sector.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Royal Nickel Corporation in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Metal Mining industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Royal Nickel Corporation 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Royal Nickel Corporation can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Metal Mining industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Loyalty marketing
– Royal Nickel Corporation 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Royal Nickel Corporation 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 Metal Mining industry.
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. Royal Nickel Corporation can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Royal Nickel Corporation is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Royal Nickel Corporation can utilize new technology in the field of Metal Mining industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Royal Nickel Corporation can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Royal Nickel Corporation External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Royal Nickel Corporation are -
Increasing wage structure of Royal Nickel Corporation
– 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 Royal Nickel Corporation.
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 Royal Nickel Corporation business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Royal Nickel Corporation is facing in Metal Mining sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Royal Nickel Corporation 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 Metal Mining industry and other sectors.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Royal Nickel Corporation 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 Metal Mining industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Metal Mining industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Royal Nickel Corporation can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Royal Nickel Corporation needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Metal Mining industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Royal Nickel Corporation 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.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Royal Nickel Corporation needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Metal Mining industry regulations.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Metal Mining industry are lowering. It can presents Royal Nickel Corporation with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Metal Mining sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Royal Nickel Corporation 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 Royal Nickel Corporation prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Royal Nickel Corporation Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Royal Nickel Corporation 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 Royal Nickel Corporation 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 Royal Nickel Corporation 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 Royal Nickel Corporation 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 Royal Nickel Corporation needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.