Nickel Creek Platinum (NCP) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Nickel Creek Platinum (Canada)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Nickel Creek Platinum is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing energy prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc

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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.

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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 Canada
4. Making a Metal Mining sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Nickel Creek Platinum

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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 -

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.

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.

High brand equity

– Nickel Creek Platinum has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Nickel Creek Platinum to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Ability to lead change in Metal Mining

– Nickel Creek Platinum is one of the leading players in the Metal Mining industry in Canada. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Metal Mining industry in Canada but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum in Metal Mining industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

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.

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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 -

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As Nickel Creek Platinum is one of the leading players in the Metal Mining industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Metal Mining industry in last five years.

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.

Interest costs

– Compare to the competition, Nickel Creek Platinum 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Metal Mining industry using digital technology.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Nickel Creek Platinum is just above the Metal Mining 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.

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Nickel Creek Platinum, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Metal Mining 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.

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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.

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.

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. Nickel Creek Platinum can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

Finding new ways to collaborate

– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Metal Mining industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Nickel Creek Platinum can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Buying journey improvements

– Nickel Creek Platinum can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Metal Mining 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.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Nickel Creek Platinum can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

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.

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.

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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 -

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.

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.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Nickel Creek Platinum may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Metal Mining sector.

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.

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.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Nickel Creek Platinum in Metal Mining industry. The Metal Mining 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.

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.

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Metal Mining industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Nickel Creek Platinum business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

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.

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.

Regulatory challenges

– Nickel Creek Platinum 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 Metal Mining industry regulations.

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 Nickel Creek Platinum in the Metal Mining sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

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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.

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