SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Silverton Adventures (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Silverton Adventures is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing transportation and logistics costs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Silverton Adventures
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Silverton Adventures can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Silverton Adventures, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Silverton Adventures 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 Silverton Adventures can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Silverton Adventures
2. Improving business portfolio management of Silverton Adventures
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 Silverton Adventures
Strengths of Silverton Adventures | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Silverton Adventures are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Silverton Adventures comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Silverton Adventures has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Analytics focus
– Silverton Adventures 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– Silverton Adventures has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Silverton Adventures to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Silverton Adventures to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Silverton Adventures 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 Silverton Adventures have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Silverton Adventures has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Silverton Adventures staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Silverton Adventures is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Silverton Adventures 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
– Silverton Adventures is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Training and development
– Silverton Adventures has one of the best training and development program in 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Silverton Adventures 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Silverton Adventures has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Silverton Adventures 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
- Silverton Adventures 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 Silverton Adventures is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Silverton Adventures emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses of Silverton Adventures | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Silverton Adventures are -
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 Silverton Adventures supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Silverton Adventures is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Silverton Adventures vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Silverton Adventures 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 bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Silverton Adventures is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Lack of clear differentiation of Silverton Adventures products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Silverton Adventures needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Need for greater diversity
– Silverton Adventures 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Silverton Adventures, 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Silverton Adventures strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Silverton Adventures don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Silverton Adventures 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. Silverton Adventures 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Silverton Adventures 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 Silverton Adventures lucrative customers.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Silverton Adventures needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High dependence on Silverton Adventures ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Silverton Adventures still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Silverton Adventures has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Silverton Adventures Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Silverton Adventures are -
Manufacturing automation
– Silverton Adventures can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
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 Silverton Adventures in the industry. Now Silverton Adventures can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Silverton Adventures 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Silverton Adventures has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Silverton Adventures to build a more holistic ecosystem for Silverton Adventures products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Silverton Adventures 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Silverton Adventures 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Silverton Adventures 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 Silverton Adventures to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Silverton Adventures to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Silverton Adventures can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Silverton Adventures operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Silverton Adventures to increase its market reach. Silverton Adventures 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.
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. Silverton Adventures can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Buying journey improvements
– Silverton Adventures 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.
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. Silverton Adventures 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. Silverton Adventures 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Silverton Adventures 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.
Threats Silverton Adventures External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Silverton Adventures are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Silverton Adventures 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 Silverton Adventures with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Silverton Adventures 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 Silverton Adventures prominent markets.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Silverton Adventures has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Silverton Adventures 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.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Silverton Adventures can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Silverton Adventures.
Increasing wage structure of Silverton Adventures
– 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 Silverton Adventures.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Silverton Adventures 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.
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 Silverton Adventures business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Silverton Adventures 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Silverton Adventures is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Silverton Adventures 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Silverton Adventures Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Silverton Adventures 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 Silverton Adventures 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 Silverton Adventures 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 Silverton Adventures 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 Silverton Adventures needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.