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 – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, technology disruption, geopolitical disruptions, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, 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 -
Innovation driven organization
– Greenland Minerals&Energy is one of the most innovative firm in Metal Mining sector.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ability to lead change in Metal Mining
– Greenland Minerals&Energy is one of the leading players in the Metal Mining industry in Australia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Metal Mining industry in Australia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Greenland Minerals&Energy in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Analytics focus
– Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Metal Mining industry. The technology infrastructure of Australia 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.
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.
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.
Digital Transformation in Metal Mining industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Greenland Minerals&Energy digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Metal Mining industry
– Greenland Minerals&Energy has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Greenland Minerals&Energy to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Metal Mining industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Greenland Minerals&Energy to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
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.
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 -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
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.
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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Greenland Minerals&Energy, in the dynamic environment of Metal Mining industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Greenland Minerals&Energy has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
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 cash cycle compare to competitors
Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
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.
High dependence on Greenland Minerals&Energy ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Greenland Minerals&Energy still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Metal Mining industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Greenland Minerals&Energy has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Australia, Greenland Minerals&Energy needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Greenland Minerals&Energy has some of the most successful models in the Metal Mining industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Greenland Minerals&Energy should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
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 -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Greenland Minerals&Energy to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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 Greenland Minerals&Energy in the Metal Mining industry. Now Greenland Minerals&Energy can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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.
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. Greenland Minerals&Energy 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. Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
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.
Loyalty marketing
– Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
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.
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 Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Greenland Minerals&Energy 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 -
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Metal Mining industry are lowering. It can presents Greenland Minerals&Energy with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Metal Mining sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 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.
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
– 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.
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.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Greenland Minerals&Energy is facing in Metal Mining sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Greenland Minerals&Energy 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. Greenland Minerals&Energy 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 Greenland Minerals&Energy.
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.
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.