Cathedral Energy Svcs (CET) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Oil Well Services & Equipment
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Cathedral Energy Svcs (Canada)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Cathedral Energy Svcs is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Cathedral Energy Svcs
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Cathedral Energy Svcs can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Cathedral Energy Svcs, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Cathedral Energy Svcs 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 Cathedral Energy Svcs can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Cathedral Energy Svcs
2. Improving business portfolio management of Cathedral Energy Svcs
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Canada
4. Making a Oil Well Services & Equipment sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Cathedral Energy Svcs
Strengths of Cathedral Energy Svcs | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Cathedral Energy Svcs are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Cathedral Energy Svcs has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Cathedral Energy Svcs 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry
– Cathedral Energy Svcs is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High brand equity
– Cathedral Energy Svcs has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Cathedral Energy Svcs to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Cathedral Energy Svcs in the Energy sector have low bargaining power. Cathedral Energy Svcs has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Cathedral Energy Svcs to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Cathedral Energy Svcs has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Cathedral Energy Svcs staying ahead in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Cathedral Energy Svcs 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.
Ability to lead change in Oil Well Services & Equipment
– Cathedral Energy Svcs is one of the leading players in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry in Canada. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry in Canada but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Cathedral Energy Svcs in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Cathedral Energy Svcs in Oil Well Services & Equipment industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in Oil Well Services & Equipment industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Cathedral Energy Svcs digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Cathedral Energy Svcs 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Cathedral Energy Svcs comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Oil Well Services & Equipment 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 switching costs
– The high switching costs that Cathedral Energy Svcs 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.
Analytics focus
– Cathedral Energy Svcs 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 Well Services & Equipment industry. The technology infrastructure of Canada 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.
Weaknesses of Cathedral Energy Svcs | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Cathedral Energy Svcs are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Cathedral Energy Svcs products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Cathedral Energy Svcs needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Canada, Cathedral Energy Svcs needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High dependence on Cathedral Energy Svcs ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Cathedral Energy Svcs still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Oil Well Services & Equipment industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Cathedral Energy Svcs has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Cathedral Energy Svcs has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Cathedral Energy Svcs, in the dynamic environment of Oil Well Services & Equipment industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Cathedral Energy Svcs has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Cathedral Energy Svcs is one of the leading players in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry in last five years.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Cathedral Energy Svcs 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Cathedral Energy Svcs has some of the most successful models in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Cathedral Energy Svcs should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Cathedral Energy Svcs has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry over the last five years. Cathedral Energy Svcs even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Cathedral Energy Svcs, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Oil Well Services & Equipment 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry, Cathedral Energy Svcs 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.
Cathedral Energy Svcs Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Cathedral Energy Svcs are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Cathedral Energy Svcs 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 Well Services & Equipment industry.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Cathedral Energy Svcs 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 Well Services & Equipment industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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. Cathedral Energy Svcs can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Cathedral Energy Svcs 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Cathedral Energy Svcs has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Oil Well Services & Equipment sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Cathedral Energy Svcs to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Cathedral Energy Svcs to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Cathedral Energy Svcs 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 Cathedral Energy Svcs to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Cathedral Energy Svcs 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.
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 Cathedral Energy Svcs 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, Cathedral Energy Svcs can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Cathedral Energy Svcs operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Oil Well Services & Equipment sector.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Oil Well Services & Equipment industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Cathedral Energy Svcs in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry. Now Cathedral Energy Svcs can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Cathedral Energy Svcs is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Cathedral Energy Svcs can utilize new technology in the field of Oil Well Services & Equipment industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Manufacturing automation
– Cathedral Energy Svcs can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Oil Well Services & Equipment 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Cathedral Energy Svcs can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Cathedral Energy Svcs External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Cathedral Energy Svcs are -
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 Cathedral Energy Svcs business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Cathedral Energy Svcs
– 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 Cathedral Energy Svcs.
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. Cathedral Energy Svcs 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.
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.
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 Cathedral Energy Svcs in the Oil Well Services & Equipment sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Cathedral Energy Svcs 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 Well Services & Equipment sector.
Environmental challenges
– Cathedral Energy Svcs 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. Cathedral Energy Svcs can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Cathedral Energy Svcs 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Oil Well Services & Equipment industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Cathedral Energy Svcs can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Cathedral Energy Svcs has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Oil Well Services & Equipment industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Cathedral Energy Svcs needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Oil Well Services & Equipment 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Cathedral Energy Svcs is facing in Oil Well Services & Equipment sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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 Cathedral Energy Svcs.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Cathedral Energy Svcs Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Cathedral Energy Svcs 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 Cathedral Energy Svcs 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 Cathedral Energy Svcs 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 Cathedral Energy Svcs 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 Cathedral Energy Svcs needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.