SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Copper Mountain Mining (Canada)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Copper Mountain Mining is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, technology disruption, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, wage bills are increasing,
there is backlash against globalization, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Copper Mountain Mining
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Copper Mountain Mining can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Copper Mountain Mining, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Copper Mountain Mining 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 Copper Mountain Mining can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Copper Mountain Mining
2. Improving business portfolio management of Copper Mountain Mining
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 Copper Mountain Mining
Strengths of Copper Mountain Mining | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Copper Mountain Mining are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Copper Mountain Mining in Metal Mining industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Copper Mountain Mining 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Metal Mining industry
– Copper Mountain Mining has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Copper Mountain Mining to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Metal Mining industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Copper Mountain Mining to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Copper Mountain Mining 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 Copper Mountain Mining is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Copper Mountain Mining emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Copper Mountain Mining 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.
High brand equity
– Copper Mountain Mining has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Copper Mountain Mining to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Copper Mountain Mining in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Copper Mountain Mining has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Copper Mountain Mining to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Copper Mountain Mining 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 Copper Mountain Mining have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Copper Mountain Mining comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Metal Mining 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Metal Mining industry
– Copper Mountain Mining is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Digital Transformation in Metal Mining industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Copper Mountain Mining digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Copper Mountain Mining 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Copper Mountain Mining 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 Copper Mountain Mining | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Copper Mountain Mining are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Copper Mountain Mining 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 Metal Mining industry using digital technology.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Copper Mountain Mining has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Metal Mining industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Copper Mountain Mining is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Copper Mountain Mining to provide better information regarding Metal Mining products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Copper Mountain Mining 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Copper Mountain Mining is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Metal Mining industry, but Copper Mountain Mining needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Copper Mountain Mining to focus more on services in the Metal Mining industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Copper Mountain Mining 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. Copper Mountain Mining should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High dependence on Copper Mountain Mining ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Copper Mountain Mining still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Metal Mining industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Copper Mountain Mining has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Copper Mountain Mining, 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Copper Mountain Mining strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Copper Mountain Mining 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Metal Mining industry, Copper Mountain Mining 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Copper Mountain Mining products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Copper Mountain Mining needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Copper Mountain Mining Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Copper Mountain Mining are -
Loyalty marketing
– Copper Mountain Mining 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Copper Mountain Mining 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.
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 Copper Mountain Mining in the Metal Mining industry. Now Copper Mountain Mining can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Copper Mountain Mining 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 Copper Mountain Mining to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Copper Mountain Mining has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Metal Mining sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Copper Mountain Mining to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Copper Mountain Mining 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 Copper Mountain Mining 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Metal Mining industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Copper Mountain Mining can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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. Copper Mountain Mining 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, Copper Mountain Mining is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Copper Mountain Mining 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Copper Mountain Mining 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Copper Mountain Mining 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 Copper Mountain Mining to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Developing new processes and practices
– Copper Mountain Mining 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Copper Mountain Mining has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Metal Mining industry. This can help Copper Mountain Mining to build a more holistic ecosystem for Copper Mountain Mining products in the Metal Mining industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Copper Mountain Mining External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Copper Mountain Mining are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Copper Mountain Mining 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Copper Mountain Mining may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Metal Mining sector.
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. Copper Mountain Mining needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Metal Mining industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Environmental challenges
– Copper Mountain Mining 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. Copper Mountain Mining can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Metal Mining industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Copper Mountain Mining is facing in Metal Mining sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Metal Mining industry are lowering. It can presents Copper Mountain Mining with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Metal Mining sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Copper Mountain Mining 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Copper Mountain Mining 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.
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.
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. Copper Mountain Mining 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.
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. Copper Mountain Mining 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Copper Mountain Mining 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 Copper Mountain Mining prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Copper Mountain Mining Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Copper Mountain Mining 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 Copper Mountain Mining 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 Copper Mountain Mining 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 Copper Mountain Mining 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 Copper Mountain Mining needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.