SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Environmental Clean (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Environmental Clean is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – 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, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing commodity prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Environmental Clean
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Environmental Clean can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Environmental Clean, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Environmental Clean 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 Environmental Clean can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Environmental Clean
2. Improving business portfolio management of Environmental Clean
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Waste Management Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Environmental Clean
Strengths of Environmental Clean | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Environmental Clean are -
Training and development
– Environmental Clean has one of the best training and development program in Services 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Waste Management Services industry
– Environmental Clean is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Innovation driven organization
– Environmental Clean is one of the most innovative firm in Waste Management Services sector.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Environmental Clean in Waste Management Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Organizational Resilience of Environmental Clean
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Environmental Clean does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High brand equity
– Environmental Clean has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Environmental Clean to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Environmental Clean 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 Environmental Clean is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Environmental Clean emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Environmental Clean comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Waste Management Services 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Environmental Clean in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Environmental Clean has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Environmental Clean to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Environmental Clean 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Environmental Clean has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Environmental Clean 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.
Digital Transformation in Waste Management Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Environmental Clean digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Environmental Clean 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.
Weaknesses of Environmental Clean | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Environmental Clean are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Environmental Clean is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Waste Management Services industry, but Environmental Clean needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Environmental Clean to focus more on services in the Waste Management Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Environmental Clean, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Waste Management Services 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Environmental Clean has high operating costs in the Waste Management Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Environmental Clean lucrative customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Environmental Clean is just above the Waste Management Services 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Waste Management Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Australia, Environmental Clean 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 Waste Management Services industry.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Australia, Environmental Clean needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Environmental Clean needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Waste Management Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Environmental Clean can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Environmental Clean is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Waste Management Services industry, Environmental Clean 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Environmental Clean 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Environmental Clean 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 Waste Management Services industry using digital technology.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Environmental Clean is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Environmental Clean to provide better information regarding Waste Management Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Environmental Clean Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Environmental Clean are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Environmental Clean has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Waste Management Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Environmental Clean to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Environmental Clean to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Environmental Clean can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help Environmental Clean to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Manufacturing automation
– Environmental Clean can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Waste Management Services 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.
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 Environmental Clean 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.
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. Environmental Clean can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Waste Management Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Environmental Clean can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Buying journey improvements
– Environmental Clean can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Waste Management Services 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Environmental Clean 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 Waste Management Services industry.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Environmental Clean in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Waste Management Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Loyalty marketing
– Environmental Clean 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Environmental Clean 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 Environmental Clean to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Environmental Clean 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Environmental Clean can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Environmental Clean operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Waste Management Services sector.
Threats Environmental Clean External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Environmental Clean are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Environmental Clean 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 Environmental Clean prominent markets.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Environmental Clean in Waste Management Services industry. The Waste Management Services 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.
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 Environmental Clean.
Increasing wage structure of Environmental Clean
– 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 Environmental Clean.
Regulatory challenges
– Environmental Clean 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 Waste Management Services industry regulations.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Environmental Clean may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Waste Management Services sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Environmental Clean 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.
Environmental challenges
– Environmental Clean 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. Environmental Clean can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Waste Management Services industry.
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. Environmental Clean 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.
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 Environmental Clean business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Waste Management Services industry are lowering. It can presents Environmental Clean with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Waste Management Services 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Environmental Clean has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Waste Management Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Environmental Clean needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Waste Management Services 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Environmental Clean Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Environmental Clean 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 Environmental Clean 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 Environmental Clean 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 Environmental Clean 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 Environmental Clean needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.