Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Medinah Minerals Inc is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing energy prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, technology disruption, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
wage bills are increasing, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Medinah Minerals Inc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Medinah Minerals Inc can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Medinah Minerals Inc, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Medinah Minerals Inc 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 Medinah Minerals Inc can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Medinah Minerals Inc
2. Improving business portfolio management of Medinah Minerals Inc
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Medinah Minerals Inc
Strengths of Medinah Minerals Inc | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Medinah Minerals Inc are -
Analytics focus
– Medinah Minerals Inc 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 industry. The technology infrastructure of United States 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Medinah Minerals Inc comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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.
Learning organization
- Medinah Minerals Inc 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 Medinah Minerals Inc is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Medinah Minerals Inc emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Medinah Minerals Inc has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Medinah Minerals Inc 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Medinah Minerals Inc has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Medinah Minerals Inc staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Medinah Minerals Inc digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Medinah Minerals Inc 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– Medinah Minerals Inc has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Medinah Minerals Inc to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Medinah Minerals Inc to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Medinah Minerals Inc is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
High brand equity
– Medinah Minerals Inc has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Medinah Minerals Inc to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Medinah Minerals Inc has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Medinah Minerals Inc have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to lead change in
– Medinah Minerals Inc is one of the leading players in the industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Medinah Minerals Inc in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Medinah Minerals Inc
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Medinah Minerals Inc does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses of Medinah Minerals Inc | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Medinah Minerals Inc are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Medinah Minerals Inc, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Medinah Minerals Inc has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Medinah Minerals Inc has some of the most successful models in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Medinah Minerals Inc should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Medinah Minerals Inc 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Medinah Minerals Inc 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 industry.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Medinah Minerals Inc has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Medinah Minerals Inc 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 Medinah Minerals Inc is just above the 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Medinah Minerals Inc is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but Medinah Minerals Inc needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Medinah Minerals Inc to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Employees’ less understanding of Medinah Minerals Inc strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Medinah Minerals Inc 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.
High dependence on Medinah Minerals Inc ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Medinah Minerals Inc still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Medinah Minerals Inc has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Medinah Minerals Inc 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 industry using digital technology.
Medinah Minerals Inc Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Medinah Minerals Inc are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Medinah Minerals Inc can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Medinah Minerals Inc 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Medinah Minerals Inc has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Medinah Minerals Inc to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Medinah Minerals Inc to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Medinah Minerals Inc 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Medinah Minerals Inc 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 Medinah Minerals Inc to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Medinah Minerals Inc is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Medinah Minerals Inc can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
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 Medinah Minerals Inc 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Medinah Minerals Inc in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Medinah Minerals Inc in the industry. Now Medinah Minerals Inc can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Medinah Minerals Inc 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 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. Medinah Minerals Inc 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 industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Medinah Minerals Inc 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. Medinah Minerals Inc 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Medinah Minerals Inc to increase its market reach. Medinah Minerals Inc 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 Medinah Minerals Inc External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Medinah Minerals Inc are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Medinah Minerals Inc 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 Medinah Minerals Inc prominent markets.
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 industry are lowering. It can presents Medinah Minerals Inc with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Medinah Minerals Inc has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Medinah Minerals Inc needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Medinah Minerals Inc may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of sector.
Environmental challenges
– Medinah Minerals Inc 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. Medinah Minerals Inc can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
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 Medinah Minerals Inc.
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 Medinah Minerals Inc business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Medinah Minerals Inc is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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. Medinah Minerals Inc 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.
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. Medinah Minerals Inc needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Increasing wage structure of Medinah Minerals Inc
– 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 Medinah Minerals Inc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Medinah Minerals Inc Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Medinah Minerals Inc 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 Medinah Minerals Inc 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 Medinah Minerals Inc 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 Medinah Minerals Inc 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 Medinah Minerals Inc needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
