SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Greenland Minerals&Energy (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Greenland Minerals&Energy is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Greenland Minerals&Energy
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Greenland Minerals&Energy can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Greenland Minerals&Energy, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Greenland Minerals&Energy
2. Improving business portfolio management of Greenland Minerals&Energy
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Metal Mining sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Greenland Minerals&Energy
Strengths of Greenland Minerals&Energy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Greenland Minerals&Energy are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Greenland Minerals&Energy comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Metal Mining 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.
Learning organization
- Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Greenland Minerals&Energy emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Greenland Minerals&Energy is one of the leading players in the Metal Mining industry in Australia. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Australia. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Innovation driven organization
– Greenland Minerals&Energy is one of the most innovative firm in Metal Mining sector.
Strong track record of project management in the Metal Mining industry
– Greenland Minerals&Energy is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High brand equity
– Greenland Minerals&Energy has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Greenland Minerals&Energy to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Greenland Minerals&Energy has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Organizational Resilience of Greenland Minerals&Energy
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Greenland Minerals&Energy in the Basic Materials sector have low bargaining power. Greenland Minerals&Energy has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Greenland Minerals&Energy to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Weaknesses of Greenland Minerals&Energy | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Greenland Minerals&Energy is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Greenland Minerals&Energy vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Greenland Minerals&Energy, 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Greenland Minerals&Energy needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Metal Mining industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Greenland Minerals&Energy can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Greenland Minerals&Energy is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Greenland Minerals&Energy has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Metal Mining industry over the last five years. Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Greenland Minerals&Energy products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Greenland Minerals&Energy needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Greenland Minerals&Energy has high operating costs in the Metal Mining industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Greenland Minerals&Energy lucrative customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Metal Mining industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Australia, Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Metal Mining industry.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Greenland Minerals&Energy is one of the leading players in the Metal Mining industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Metal Mining industry in last five years.
Skills based hiring in Metal Mining industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Greenland Minerals&Energy Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Greenland Minerals&Energy are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Greenland Minerals&Energy is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Greenland Minerals&Energy 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
– Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
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. Greenland Minerals&Energy can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Greenland Minerals&Energy can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Metal Mining 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Greenland Minerals&Energy 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
– Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Greenland Minerals&Energy can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Metal Mining 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Metal Mining industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Greenland Minerals&Energy can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Greenland Minerals&Energy can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Greenland Minerals&Energy operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Metal Mining sector.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Threats Greenland Minerals&Energy External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Greenland Minerals&Energy are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy prominent markets.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Greenland Minerals&Energy in Metal Mining industry. The Metal Mining 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.
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 Metal Mining industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy.
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 Greenland Minerals&Energy business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Metal Mining industry and other sectors.
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Increasing wage structure of Greenland Minerals&Energy
– 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy.
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. Greenland Minerals&Energy needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Metal Mining industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Greenland Minerals&Energy has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Metal Mining industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Greenland Minerals&Energy Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.