Kingray New Materials (600390) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Metal Mining
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Kingray New Materials (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Kingray New Materials is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Kingray New Materials
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Kingray New Materials can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Kingray New Materials, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Kingray New Materials 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 Kingray New Materials can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Kingray New Materials
2. Improving business portfolio management of Kingray New Materials
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Metal Mining sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Kingray New Materials
Strengths of Kingray New Materials | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Kingray New Materials are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Kingray New Materials has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Kingray New Materials staying ahead in the Metal Mining industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management in the Metal Mining industry
– Kingray New Materials is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Kingray New Materials in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Kingray New Materials has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Kingray New Materials to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Digital Transformation in Metal Mining industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Kingray New Materials digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Kingray New Materials 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Kingray New Materials 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
– Kingray New Materials has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Kingray New Materials to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Kingray New Materials 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 Kingray New Materials is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Kingray New Materials emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Kingray New Materials
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Kingray New Materials does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Kingray New Materials has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Metal Mining industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Kingray New Materials have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Metal Mining industry
– Kingray New Materials has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Kingray New Materials to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Metal Mining industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Kingray New Materials to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Kingray New Materials in Metal Mining industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Diverse revenue streams
– Kingray New Materials is present in almost all the verticals within the Metal Mining industry. This has provided Kingray New Materials 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.
Weaknesses of Kingray New Materials | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Kingray New Materials are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Kingray New Materials 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Kingray New Materials products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Kingray New Materials needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Employees’ less understanding of Kingray New Materials strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Kingray New Materials 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Kingray New Materials is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Metal Mining industry, but Kingray New Materials needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Kingray New Materials to focus more on services in the Metal Mining industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Kingray New Materials 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Metal Mining industry, Kingray New Materials 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.
Skills based hiring in Metal Mining industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Kingray New Materials 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Kingray New Materials 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.
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 Kingray New Materials supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Kingray New Materials is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Kingray New Materials vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Kingray New Materials has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the Metal Mining industry using digital technology.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Kingray New Materials, 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.
Kingray New Materials Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Kingray New Materials are -
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. Kingray New Materials 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. Kingray New Materials 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Kingray New Materials 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Kingray New Materials 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 Kingray New Materials to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Kingray New Materials to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Kingray New Materials 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Metal Mining industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Kingray New Materials in the Metal Mining industry. Now Kingray New Materials can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Kingray New Materials 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Kingray New Materials is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Kingray New Materials 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Kingray New Materials 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Kingray New Materials can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Developing new processes and practices
– Kingray New Materials can develop new processes and procedures in Metal Mining 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Kingray New Materials has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Metal Mining industry. This can help Kingray New Materials to build a more holistic ecosystem for Kingray New Materials products in the Metal Mining industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
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. Kingray New Materials can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Kingray New Materials can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Kingray New Materials operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Metal Mining sector.
Threats Kingray New Materials External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Kingray New Materials are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Kingray New Materials can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the Metal Mining industry.
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. Kingray New Materials can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Kingray New Materials is facing in Metal Mining sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Kingray New Materials 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.
Environmental challenges
– Kingray New Materials 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. Kingray New Materials can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Metal Mining industry.
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 Kingray New Materials.
Regulatory challenges
– Kingray New Materials 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Kingray New Materials has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Metal Mining industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Kingray New Materials needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Metal Mining 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.
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. Kingray New Materials needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Metal Mining 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. Kingray New Materials 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Metal Mining industry are lowering. It can presents Kingray New Materials with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Metal Mining sector.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Kingray New Materials 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 Kingray New Materials Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Kingray New Materials 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 Kingray New Materials 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 Kingray New Materials 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 Kingray New Materials 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 Kingray New Materials needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.