Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Navios Maritime Midstream Partners is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Navios Maritime Midstream Partners can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Navios Maritime Midstream Partners, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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 Navios Maritime Midstream Partners can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners
2. Improving business portfolio management of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Water Transportation sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners
Strengths of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Water Transportation industry
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Navios Maritime Midstream Partners to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Water Transportation industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Navios Maritime Midstream Partners to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Water Transportation industry
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Innovation driven organization
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners is one of the most innovative firm in Water Transportation sector.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Water Transportation 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.
High brand equity
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Navios Maritime Midstream Partners to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners in Water Transportation industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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 Navios Maritime Midstream Partners is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Navios Maritime Midstream Partners emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Water Transportation industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Navios Maritime Midstream Partners staying ahead in the Water Transportation industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners is present in almost all the verticals within the Water Transportation industry. This has provided Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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.
Weaknesses of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners are -
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Navios Maritime Midstream Partners, in the dynamic environment of Water Transportation industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Navios Maritime Midstream Partners has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Water Transportation industry, but Navios Maritime Midstream Partners needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Navios Maritime Midstream Partners to focus more on services in the Water Transportation industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Employees’ less understanding of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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 Navios Maritime Midstream Partners ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Water Transportation industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Navios Maritime Midstream Partners has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Navios Maritime Midstream Partners needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
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 Navios Maritime Midstream Partners supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Navios Maritime Midstream Partners is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Navios Maritime Midstream Partners vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Navios Maritime Midstream Partners has some of the most successful models in the Water Transportation industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Navios Maritime Midstream Partners should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Navios Maritime Midstream Partners is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Navios Maritime Midstream Partners to provide better information regarding Water Transportation products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Skills based hiring in Water Transportation industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Navios Maritime Midstream Partners has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Water Transportation 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 strategic competitive environment developments
– As Navios Maritime Midstream Partners is one of the leading players in the Water Transportation industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Water Transportation industry in last five years.
Navios Maritime Midstream Partners Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners are -
Loyalty marketing
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Water Transportation 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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 Water Transportation industry.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Water Transportation industry. This can help Navios Maritime Midstream Partners to build a more holistic ecosystem for Navios Maritime Midstream Partners products in the Water Transportation industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Navios Maritime Midstream Partners in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Water Transportation industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Navios Maritime Midstream Partners can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Navios Maritime Midstream Partners operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Water Transportation sector.
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. Navios Maritime Midstream Partners can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Water Transportation sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Navios Maritime Midstream Partners to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Navios Maritime Midstream Partners to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Navios Maritime Midstream Partners can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners can develop new processes and procedures in Water Transportation 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Water Transportation industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Navios Maritime Midstream Partners can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Buying journey improvements
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Water Transportation 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.
Threats Navios Maritime Midstream Partners External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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 Water Transportation industry.
Increasing wage structure of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners
– 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 Navios Maritime Midstream Partners.
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. Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Navios Maritime Midstream Partners may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Water Transportation 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 Navios Maritime Midstream Partners.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Water Transportation industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Navios Maritime Midstream Partners can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Navios Maritime Midstream Partners business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Navios Maritime Midstream Partners needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Water Transportation industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Water Transportation industry are lowering. It can presents Navios Maritime Midstream Partners with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Water Transportation sector.
Environmental challenges
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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. Navios Maritime Midstream Partners can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Water Transportation industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Navios Maritime Midstream Partners has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Water Transportation industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Navios Maritime Midstream Partners needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Water Transportation 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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 Navios Maritime Midstream Partners prominent markets.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Navios Maritime Midstream Partners Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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 Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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 Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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 Navios Maritime Midstream Partners 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 Navios Maritime Midstream Partners needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.