Nickel Creek Platinum (NCPCF) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Metal Mining
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Nickel Creek Platinum (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Nickel Creek Platinum is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing energy prices, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Nickel Creek Platinum
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Nickel Creek Platinum can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Nickel Creek Platinum, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Nickel Creek Platinum
2. Improving business portfolio management of Nickel Creek Platinum
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Metal Mining sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Nickel Creek Platinum
Strengths of Nickel Creek Platinum | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Nickel Creek Platinum are -
Strong track record of project management in the Metal Mining industry
– Nickel Creek Platinum is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Nickel Creek Platinum emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Nickel Creek Platinum is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Metal Mining industry. The technology infrastructure of 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.
Training and development
– Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Metal Mining industry
– Nickel Creek Platinum has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Nickel Creek Platinum to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Metal Mining industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Nickel Creek Platinum to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Nickel Creek Platinum is present in almost all the verticals within the Metal Mining industry. This has provided Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Organizational Resilience of Nickel Creek Platinum
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Nickel Creek Platinum does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Nickel Creek Platinum has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Nickel Creek Platinum staying ahead in the Metal Mining industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Nickel Creek Platinum has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Weaknesses of Nickel Creek Platinum | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Nickel Creek Platinum are -
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Nickel Creek Platinum, in the dynamic environment of Metal Mining industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Nickel Creek Platinum has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Need for greater diversity
– Nickel Creek Platinum has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Nickel Creek Platinum 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. Nickel Creek Platinum should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Nickel Creek Platinum is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Metal Mining industry, but Nickel Creek Platinum needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Nickel Creek Platinum to focus more on services in the Metal Mining industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Nickel Creek Platinum needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High dependence on Nickel Creek Platinum ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Metal Mining industry, Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Metal Mining industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Metal Mining industry.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Nickel Creek Platinum needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Metal Mining industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Nickel Creek Platinum can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Nickel Creek Platinum is planning to shift buying processes online.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Nickel Creek Platinum has high operating costs in the Metal Mining industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Nickel Creek Platinum lucrative customers.
Skills based hiring in Metal Mining industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Nickel Creek Platinum Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Nickel Creek Platinum are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Nickel Creek Platinum to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Nickel Creek Platinum has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Metal Mining industry. This can help Nickel Creek Platinum to build a more holistic ecosystem for Nickel Creek Platinum products in the Metal Mining industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Nickel Creek Platinum can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Nickel Creek Platinum operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Metal Mining sector.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Nickel Creek Platinum is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Nickel Creek Platinum to increase its market reach. Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
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 Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Metal Mining industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Nickel Creek Platinum 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. Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Nickel Creek Platinum can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Threats Nickel Creek Platinum External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Nickel Creek Platinum are -
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. Nickel Creek Platinum needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Metal Mining industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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. Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum prominent markets.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Nickel Creek Platinum is facing in Metal Mining sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Nickel Creek Platinum
– 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 Nickel Creek Platinum.
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 Nickel Creek Platinum business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Nickel Creek Platinum.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Nickel Creek Platinum 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Metal Mining industry are lowering. It can presents Nickel Creek Platinum with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Metal Mining sector.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Nickel Creek Platinum Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
