Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing commodity prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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 Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium
2. Improving business portfolio management of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium
Strengths of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium are -
Analytics focus
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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 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.
Organizational Resilience of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium is one of the leading players in the industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium in the sector have low bargaining power. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to lead change in
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium is one of the leading players in the industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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 Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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.
Learning organization
- Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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 Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High dependence on Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium has some of the most successful models in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium is planning to shift buying processes online.
Lack of clear differentiation of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Buying journey improvements
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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 Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Loyalty marketing
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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.
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. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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 Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium to increase its market reach. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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.
Threats Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium are -
Environmental challenges
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of sector.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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. Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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.
Increasing wage structure of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium
– 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 Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium.
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 Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium.
Regulatory challenges
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the industry regulations.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the industry.
Technology 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.
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 Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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 Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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 Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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 Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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 Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium 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 Sprott Physical Platinum Palladium needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
