SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Harte Gold Corp. (Canada)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Harte Gold Corp. is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Harte Gold Corp. can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Harte Gold Corp., and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Harte Gold Corp. 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 Harte Gold Corp. can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Harte Gold Corp.
2. Improving business portfolio management of Harte Gold Corp.
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 Harte Gold Corp.
Strengths of Harte Gold Corp. | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Harte Gold Corp. are -
Training and development
– Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Harte Gold Corp. in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Harte Gold Corp. has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Harte Gold Corp. to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Harte Gold Corp. are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Harte Gold Corp. 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 Harte Gold Corp. is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Harte Gold Corp. emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Harte Gold Corp. 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 Harte Gold Corp. have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Organizational Resilience of Harte Gold Corp.
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Harte Gold Corp. does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Harte Gold Corp. is one of the leading players in the Gold & Silver 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.
Ability to lead change in Gold & Silver
– Harte Gold Corp. is one of the leading players in the Gold & Silver industry in Canada. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Gold & Silver industry in Canada but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Harte Gold Corp. in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High brand equity
– Harte Gold Corp. has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Harte Gold Corp. to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Analytics focus
– Harte Gold Corp. 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 switching costs
– The high switching costs that Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Harte Gold Corp. in Gold & Silver industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of Harte Gold Corp. | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Harte Gold Corp. are -
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 Harte Gold Corp. supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Harte Gold Corp. is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Harte Gold Corp. vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Skills based hiring in Gold & Silver industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Harte Gold Corp. has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Gold & Silver industry over the last five years. Harte Gold Corp. even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Harte Gold Corp. 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 Harte Gold Corp. can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Harte Gold Corp. is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Gold & Silver industry, Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Canada, Harte Gold Corp. needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Harte Gold Corp. has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Gold & Silver industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Harte Gold Corp. has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Harte Gold Corp. Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Harte Gold Corp. are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Harte Gold Corp. 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 Harte Gold Corp. to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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. Harte Gold Corp. can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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. Harte Gold Corp. 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. Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Harte Gold Corp. can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Gold & Silver 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Harte Gold Corp. can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Harte Gold Corp. is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Harte Gold Corp. can utilize new technology in the field of Gold & Silver industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Harte Gold Corp. can develop new processes and procedures in Gold & Silver 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Harte Gold Corp. can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Harte Gold Corp. operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Gold & Silver sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Harte Gold Corp. to increase its market reach. Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Harte Gold Corp. has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Gold & Silver industry. This can help Harte Gold Corp. to build a more holistic ecosystem for Harte Gold Corp. products in the Gold & Silver industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Harte Gold Corp. External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Harte Gold Corp. are -
Regulatory challenges
– Harte Gold Corp. 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 Gold & Silver industry regulations.
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. Harte Gold Corp. can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Harte Gold Corp. 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.
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.
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. Harte Gold Corp. needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Gold & Silver industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Gold & Silver industry are lowering. It can presents Harte Gold Corp. with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Gold & Silver sector.
Increasing wage structure of Harte Gold Corp.
– 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 Harte Gold Corp..
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. Harte Gold Corp. 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.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Harte Gold Corp. 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Harte Gold Corp. 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 Gold & Silver industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Harte Gold Corp. 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 Harte Gold Corp. prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Harte Gold Corp. Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Harte Gold Corp. 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 Harte Gold Corp. 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 Harte Gold Corp. 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 Harte Gold Corp. 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 Harte Gold Corp. needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
