SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Guizhou Panjiang Coal (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Guizhou Panjiang Coal is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – technology disruption, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is backlash against globalization, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
wage bills are increasing, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Guizhou Panjiang Coal
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Guizhou Panjiang Coal can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Guizhou Panjiang Coal, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Guizhou Panjiang Coal can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Guizhou Panjiang Coal
2. Improving business portfolio management of Guizhou Panjiang Coal
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Coal sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Guizhou Panjiang Coal
Strengths of Guizhou Panjiang Coal | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Guizhou Panjiang Coal are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Guizhou Panjiang Coal in Coal industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to lead change in Coal
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal is one of the leading players in the Coal industry in China. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Coal industry in China but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Guizhou Panjiang Coal in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management in the Coal industry
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Guizhou Panjiang Coal is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Guizhou Panjiang Coal emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Coal industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Guizhou Panjiang Coal digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Coal industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Guizhou Panjiang Coal have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal has one of the best training and development program in Energy 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.
Organizational Resilience of Guizhou Panjiang Coal
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Guizhou Panjiang Coal does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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.
Analytics focus
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Coal industry. The technology infrastructure of China 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.
Weaknesses of Guizhou Panjiang Coal | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Guizhou Panjiang Coal are -
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Guizhou Panjiang Coal is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Guizhou Panjiang Coal to provide better information regarding Coal products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Guizhou Panjiang Coal is just above the Coal 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.
Skills based hiring in Coal industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Coal industry using digital technology.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Coal industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in China, Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Coal industry.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Guizhou Panjiang Coal has some of the most successful models in the Coal industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Guizhou Panjiang Coal should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Guizhou Panjiang Coal, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Coal 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Guizhou Panjiang Coal needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Coal industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Guizhou Panjiang Coal can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Guizhou Panjiang Coal is planning to shift buying processes online.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of China, Guizhou Panjiang Coal needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Employees’ less understanding of Guizhou Panjiang Coal strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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.
High dependence on Guizhou Panjiang Coal ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Guizhou Panjiang Coal still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Coal industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Guizhou Panjiang Coal has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Guizhou Panjiang Coal Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Guizhou Panjiang Coal are -
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Guizhou Panjiang Coal can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Guizhou Panjiang Coal operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Coal sector.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Guizhou Panjiang Coal can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Guizhou Panjiang Coal has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Coal industry. This can help Guizhou Panjiang Coal to build a more holistic ecosystem for Guizhou Panjiang Coal products in the Coal industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Coal industry.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Guizhou Panjiang Coal to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Coal industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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. Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Coal sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Guizhou Panjiang Coal to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Guizhou Panjiang Coal to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Buying journey improvements
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Coal 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Guizhou Panjiang Coal in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Coal industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal can develop new processes and procedures in Coal 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.
Threats Guizhou Panjiang Coal External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Guizhou Panjiang Coal are -
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 Guizhou Panjiang Coal.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Coal industry are lowering. It can presents Guizhou Panjiang Coal with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Coal sector.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Guizhou Panjiang Coal may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Coal sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Coal industry.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Coal industry and other sectors.
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 Guizhou Panjiang Coal in the Coal sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Coal industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Guizhou Panjiang Coal needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Coal 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.
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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Guizhou Panjiang Coal prominent markets.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Coal industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Guizhou Panjiang Coal can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Regulatory challenges
– Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Coal industry regulations.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Guizhou Panjiang Coal in Coal industry. The Coal industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Guizhou Panjiang Coal Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Guizhou Panjiang Coal 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 Guizhou Panjiang Coal needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.