SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Northern Oil&Gas (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Northern Oil&Gas 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%, geopolitical disruptions, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is backlash against globalization, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing commodity prices, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Northern Oil&Gas can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Northern Oil&Gas, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Northern Oil&Gas 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 Northern Oil&Gas can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Northern Oil&Gas
2. Improving business portfolio management of Northern Oil&Gas
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Oil & Gas Operations sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Northern Oil&Gas
Strengths of Northern Oil&Gas | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Northern Oil&Gas are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Northern Oil&Gas 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
– Northern Oil&Gas is one of the most innovative firm in Oil & Gas Operations sector.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Northern Oil&Gas has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Oil & Gas Operations industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Northern Oil&Gas have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Oil & Gas Operations industry
– Northern Oil&Gas has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Northern Oil&Gas to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Oil & Gas Operations industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Northern Oil&Gas to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Northern Oil&Gas in the Energy sector have low bargaining power. Northern Oil&Gas has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Northern Oil&Gas to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Learning organization
- Northern Oil&Gas 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 Northern Oil&Gas is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Northern Oil&Gas emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Oil & Gas Operations industry
– Northern Oil&Gas is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Training and development
– Northern Oil&Gas has one of the best training and development program in Energy 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Northern Oil&Gas is present in almost all the verticals within the Oil & Gas Operations industry. This has provided Northern Oil&Gas 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.
Organizational Resilience of Northern Oil&Gas
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Northern Oil&Gas does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Analytics focus
– Northern Oil&Gas 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry. The technology infrastructure of United States is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Northern Oil&Gas comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Weaknesses of Northern Oil&Gas | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Northern Oil&Gas are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Northern Oil&Gas 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry using digital technology.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Oil & Gas Operations industry, Northern Oil&Gas 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Northern Oil&Gas needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Oil & Gas Operations industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Northern Oil&Gas can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Northern Oil&Gas is planning to shift buying processes online.
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 Northern Oil&Gas supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Northern Oil&Gas is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Northern Oil&Gas vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– Northern Oil&Gas 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 Northern Oil&Gas has some of the most successful models in the Oil & Gas Operations industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Northern Oil&Gas should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Northern Oil&Gas needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Oil & Gas Operations industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Northern Oil&Gas 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry.
High dependence on Northern Oil&Gas ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Northern Oil&Gas still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Oil & Gas Operations industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Northern Oil&Gas has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Lack of clear differentiation of Northern Oil&Gas products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Northern Oil&Gas needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Northern Oil&Gas is just above the Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Northern Oil&Gas Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Northern Oil&Gas are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Northern Oil&Gas 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 Northern Oil&Gas to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Northern Oil&Gas in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Oil & Gas Operations industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Loyalty marketing
– Northern Oil&Gas 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
– Northern Oil&Gas can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Oil & Gas Operations 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Northern Oil&Gas has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Oil & Gas Operations industry. This can help Northern Oil&Gas to build a more holistic ecosystem for Northern Oil&Gas products in the Oil & Gas Operations industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Northern Oil&Gas 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Northern Oil&Gas can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Northern Oil&Gas operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Oil & Gas Operations sector.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Northern Oil&Gas 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Northern Oil&Gas 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Northern Oil&Gas 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 Northern Oil&Gas 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 Northern Oil&Gas to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Northern Oil&Gas is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Northern Oil&Gas can utilize new technology in the field of Oil & Gas Operations 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 Northern Oil&Gas 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry.
Threats Northern Oil&Gas External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Northern Oil&Gas are -
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Oil & Gas Operations industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Northern Oil&Gas can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Northern Oil&Gas
– 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 Northern Oil&Gas.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Northern Oil&Gas is facing in Oil & Gas Operations sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Northern Oil&Gas 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. Northern Oil&Gas can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Oil & Gas Operations industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Northern Oil&Gas may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Oil & Gas Operations sector.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Oil & Gas Operations industry are lowering. It can presents Northern Oil&Gas with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Oil & Gas Operations sector.
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 Northern Oil&Gas in the Oil & Gas Operations sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Regulatory challenges
– Northern Oil&Gas 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 Oil & Gas Operations industry regulations.
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 Northern Oil&Gas business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Northern Oil&Gas in Oil & Gas Operations industry. The Oil & Gas Operations industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
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.
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. Northern Oil&Gas needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Oil & Gas Operations industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Northern Oil&Gas.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Northern Oil&Gas Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Northern Oil&Gas 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 Northern Oil&Gas 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 Northern Oil&Gas 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 Northern Oil&Gas 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 Northern Oil&Gas needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
