New Millennium Iron (NML) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for New Millennium Iron (Canada)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , New Millennium Iron is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing energy prices, wage bills are increasing, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing commodity prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc

---

---

---

---

Introduction to SWOT Analysis of New Millennium Iron

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that New Millennium Iron can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the New Millennium Iron, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which New Millennium Iron 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 New Millennium Iron can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of New Millennium Iron
2. Improving business portfolio management of New Millennium Iron
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 New Millennium Iron

---

Strengths of New Millennium Iron | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of New Millennium Iron are -

Learning organization

- New Millennium Iron 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 New Millennium Iron is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at New Millennium Iron emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Ability to lead change in Metal Mining

– New Millennium Iron 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 New Millennium Iron in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that New Millennium Iron 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.

Diverse revenue streams

– New Millennium Iron is present in almost all the verticals within the Metal Mining industry. This has provided New Millennium Iron 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.

Innovation driven organization

– New Millennium Iron is one of the most innovative firm in Metal Mining sector.

Organizational Resilience of New Millennium Iron

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing New Millennium Iron does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Sustainable margins compare to other players in Metal Mining industry

– New Millennium Iron has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled New Millennium Iron to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Metal Mining industry. The sustainable margins have also helped New Millennium Iron to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the New Millennium Iron 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

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

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of New Millennium Iron in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. New Millennium Iron has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps New Millennium Iron to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Successful track record of launching new products

– New Millennium Iron has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. New Millennium Iron 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.

Ability to recruit top talent

– New Millennium Iron is one of the leading players in the Metal Mining industry in Canada. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Canada. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.

---

---

Weaknesses of New Millennium Iron | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of New Millennium Iron are -

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that New Millennium Iron needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Metal Mining industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at New Millennium Iron can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as New Millennium Iron is planning to shift buying processes online.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, New Millennium Iron has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Metal Mining industry over the last five years. New Millennium Iron 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.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

New Millennium Iron has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Metal Mining industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, New Millennium Iron 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 New Millennium Iron lucrative customers.

Skills based hiring in Metal Mining industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at New Millennium Iron 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.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of New Millennium Iron 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.

Need for greater diversity

– New Millennium Iron 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.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, New Millennium Iron is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help New Millennium Iron to provide better information regarding Metal Mining products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

– The organizational structure of New Millennium Iron is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Metal Mining industry, but New Millennium Iron needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help New Millennium Iron to focus more on services in the Metal Mining industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of New Millennium Iron, 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.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As New Millennium Iron 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.

---

New Millennium Iron Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of New Millennium Iron are -

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. New Millennium Iron can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

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 New Millennium Iron 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– New Millennium Iron 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 New Millennium Iron to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help New Millennium Iron to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Reforming the budgeting process

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

Loyalty marketing

– New Millennium Iron 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.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for New Millennium Iron 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.

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of New Millennium Iron has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Metal Mining industry. This can help New Millennium Iron to build a more holistic ecosystem for New Millennium Iron 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 New Millennium Iron 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.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for New Millennium Iron in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Metal Mining industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, New Millennium Iron 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 New Millennium Iron to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Buying journey improvements

– New Millennium Iron 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.

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, New Millennium Iron is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. New Millennium Iron can utilize new technology in the field of Metal Mining industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.

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. New Millennium Iron 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. New Millennium Iron 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.

---

Threats New Millennium Iron External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of New Millennium Iron are -

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. New Millennium Iron will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.

Consumer confidence and its impact on New Millennium Iron demand

– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in Metal Mining industry and other sectors.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– New Millennium Iron 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.

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 New Millennium Iron.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for New Millennium Iron 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.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, New Millennium Iron 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.

Regulatory challenges

– New Millennium Iron 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 New Millennium Iron in the Metal Mining sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

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. New Millennium Iron can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

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 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. New Millennium Iron needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Metal Mining industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Aging population

– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, New Millennium Iron 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 New Millennium Iron prominent markets.

---

Weighted SWOT Analysis of New Millennium Iron Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at New Millennium Iron 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 New Millennium Iron 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 New Millennium Iron 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 New Millennium Iron 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 New Millennium Iron needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

--- ---