Sixty Six Oilfield (SSOF) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Sixty Six Oilfield (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Sixty Six Oilfield is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, wage bills are increasing, increasing transportation and logistics costs, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is backlash against globalization, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Sixty Six Oilfield
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Sixty Six Oilfield can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Sixty Six Oilfield, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Sixty Six Oilfield 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 Sixty Six Oilfield can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Sixty Six Oilfield
2. Improving business portfolio management of Sixty Six Oilfield
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 Sixty Six Oilfield
Strengths of Sixty Six Oilfield | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Sixty Six Oilfield are -
Organizational Resilience of Sixty Six Oilfield
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Sixty Six Oilfield does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Sixty Six Oilfield is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– Sixty Six Oilfield is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Sixty Six Oilfield 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
– Sixty Six Oilfield has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Sixty Six Oilfield to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Analytics focus
– Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Learning organization
- Sixty Six Oilfield 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 Sixty Six Oilfield is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Sixty Six Oilfield emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Sixty Six Oilfield in the sector have low bargaining power. Sixty Six Oilfield has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Sixty Six Oilfield to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Sixty Six Oilfield 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 Sixty Six Oilfield have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Sixty Six Oilfield digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Weaknesses of Sixty Six Oilfield | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Sixty Six Oilfield are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Sixty Six Oilfield products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Sixty Six Oilfield needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Sixty Six Oilfield, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Sixty Six Oilfield is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but Sixty Six Oilfield needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Sixty Six Oilfield to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Sixty Six Oilfield has high operating costs in the industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Sixty Six Oilfield lucrative customers.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Sixty Six Oilfield supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Sixty Six Oilfield is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Sixty Six Oilfield vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Sixty Six Oilfield Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Sixty Six Oilfield are -
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Sixty Six Oilfield in the industry. Now Sixty Six Oilfield can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Loyalty marketing
– Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Sixty Six Oilfield 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 Sixty Six Oilfield to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Sixty Six Oilfield 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 Sixty Six Oilfield can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Sixty Six Oilfield 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 Sixty Six Oilfield 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. Sixty Six Oilfield can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Sixty Six Oilfield 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 industry.
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. Sixty Six Oilfield 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. Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Sixty Six Oilfield can develop new processes and procedures in industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing 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 Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Sixty Six Oilfield has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Sixty Six Oilfield to build a more holistic ecosystem for Sixty Six Oilfield products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Sixty Six Oilfield can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats Sixty Six Oilfield External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Sixty Six Oilfield are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Sixty Six Oilfield has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
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 Sixty Six Oilfield.
Regulatory challenges
– Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Environmental challenges
– Sixty Six Oilfield 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. Sixty Six Oilfield can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
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 Sixty Six Oilfield business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Sixty Six Oilfield 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 Sixty Six Oilfield prominent markets.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Sixty Six Oilfield 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 industry and other sectors.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Sixty Six Oilfield with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Increasing wage structure of Sixty Six Oilfield
– 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 Sixty Six Oilfield.
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. Sixty Six Oilfield 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Sixty Six Oilfield Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Sixty Six Oilfield 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 Sixty Six Oilfield 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 Sixty Six Oilfield 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 Sixty Six Oilfield 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 Sixty Six Oilfield needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.