NGL Energy Pref Class B (NGL_pb) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for NGL Energy Pref Class B (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , NGL Energy Pref Class B 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%, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of NGL Energy Pref Class B
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that NGL Energy Pref Class B can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the NGL Energy Pref Class B, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which NGL Energy Pref Class B 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 NGL Energy Pref Class B can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of NGL Energy Pref Class B
2. Improving business portfolio management of NGL Energy Pref Class B
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 NGL Energy Pref Class B
Strengths of NGL Energy Pref Class B | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of NGL Energy Pref Class B are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
Innovation driven organization
– NGL Energy Pref Class B is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For NGL Energy Pref Class B digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– NGL Energy Pref Class B is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to recruit top talent
– NGL Energy Pref Class B is one of the leading players in the industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Learning organization
- NGL Energy Pref Class B 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 NGL Energy Pref Class B is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at NGL Energy Pref Class B emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
High brand equity
– NGL Energy Pref Class B has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled NGL Energy Pref Class B to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– NGL Energy Pref Class B has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled NGL Energy Pref Class B to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped NGL Energy Pref Class B to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– NGL Energy Pref Class B 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 NGL Energy Pref Class B have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– NGL Energy Pref Class B has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. NGL Energy Pref Class B 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 NGL Energy Pref Class B | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of NGL Energy Pref Class B are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of NGL Energy Pref Class B, 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at NGL Energy Pref Class B, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. NGL Energy Pref Class B has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
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 NGL Energy Pref Class B supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, NGL Energy Pref Class B is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left NGL Energy Pref Class B vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that NGL Energy Pref Class B needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at NGL Energy Pref Class B can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as NGL Energy Pref Class B is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, NGL Energy Pref Class B has high operating costs in the industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract NGL Energy Pref Class B lucrative customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of NGL Energy Pref Class B products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, NGL Energy Pref Class B needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
NGL Energy Pref Class B Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of NGL Energy Pref Class B are -
Buying journey improvements
– NGL Energy Pref Class B can improve the customer journey of consumers in the 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– NGL Energy Pref Class B 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 NGL Energy Pref Class B to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help NGL Energy Pref Class B to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
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. NGL Energy Pref Class B can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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. NGL Energy Pref Class B 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. NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, NGL Energy Pref Class B 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 NGL Energy Pref Class B to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
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 NGL Energy Pref Class B in the industry. Now NGL Energy Pref Class B can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
Loyalty marketing
– NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, NGL Energy Pref Class B can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that NGL Energy Pref Class B operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
Threats NGL Energy Pref Class B External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of NGL Energy Pref Class B are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents NGL Energy Pref Class B with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on NGL Energy Pref Class B 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 industry and other sectors.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for NGL Energy Pref Class B in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that NGL Energy Pref Class B is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– NGL Energy Pref Class B 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 industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– NGL Energy Pref Class B has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
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. NGL Energy Pref Class B needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
Increasing wage structure of NGL Energy Pref Class B
– 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 NGL Energy Pref Class B.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, NGL Energy Pref Class B 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.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– NGL Energy Pref Class B needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of NGL Energy Pref Class B Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at NGL Energy Pref Class B 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 NGL Energy Pref Class B 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 NGL Energy Pref Class B 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 NGL Energy Pref Class B 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 NGL Energy Pref Class B needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.