Golar LNG Partners LP SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that can be used by Golar LNG Partners LP managers to do a situational analysis of the company . It is a handy technique to map out the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Golar LNG Partners LP is facing in its current business environment.

The Golar LNG Partners LP is one of the leading firms in its industry. Golar LNG Partners LP maintains its dominant position in market by critically analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis.  SWOT analysis a highly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the firm such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.


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The SWOT Analysis framework helps an organization to identify the internal strategic factors such as -strengths and weaknesses, & external strategic factors such as - opportunities and threats. It leads to a 2X2 matrix – also called SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix enables the managers of the Golar LNG Partners LP to develop four types of strategies:

• SO (strengths-opportunities) Strategies
• WO (weaknesses-opportunities) Strategies
• ST (strengths-threats) Strategies
•  WT (weaknesses-threats) Strategies

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The main purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a company can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Golar LNG Partners LP strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Golar LNG Partners LP SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Golar LNG Partners LP – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading organizations in its industry, Golar LNG Partners LP has numerous strengths that enable it to thrive in the market place. These strengths not only help it to protect the market share in existing markets but also help in penetrating new markets. Based on Fern Fort University extensive research – some of the strengths of Golar LNG Partners LP are –

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• Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Golar LNG Partners LP is investing huge resources in training and development of its employees resulting in a workforce that is not only highly skilled but also motivated to achieve more.
• Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
• Strong dealer community – It has built a culture among distributor & dealers where the dealers not only promote company’s products but also invest in training the sales team to explain to the customer how he/she can extract the maximum benefits out of the products.
• Superb Performance in New Markets – Golar LNG Partners LP has built expertise at entering new markets and making success of them. The expansion has helped the organization to build new revenue stream and diversify the economic cycle risk in the markets it operates in.
• Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
• Successful track record of integrating complimentary firms through mergers & acquisition. It has successfully integrated number of technology companies in the past few years to streamline its operations and to build a reliable supply chain.
• Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Golar LNG Partners LP has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Golar LNG Partners LP just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
• Strong Free Cash Flow – Golar LNG Partners LP has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.

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Weakness of Golar LNG Partners LP – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Golar LNG Partners LP can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where an organization can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

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• Limited success outside core business – Even though Golar LNG Partners LP is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
• High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Golar LNG Partners LP has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
• There are gaps in the product range sold by the company. This lack of choice can give a new competitor a foothold in the market.
• Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Golar LNG Partners LP needs to put more money in technology to integrate the processes across the board. Right now the investment in technologies is not at par with the vision of the company.
• Days inventory is high compare to the competitors – making the company raise more capital to invest in the channel. This can impact the long term growth of Golar LNG Partners LP
• Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Golar LNG Partners LP is spending above the industry average on Research and Development, it has not been able to compete with the leading players in the industry in terms of innovation. It has come across as a mature firm looking forward to bring out products based on tested features in the market.
• The company has not being able to tackle the challenges present by the new entrants in the segment and has lost small market share in the niche categories. Golar LNG Partners LP has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.

Opportunities for Golar LNG Partners LP – External Strategic Factors

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• Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Golar LNG Partners LP to capture new customers and increase its market share.
• The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Golar LNG Partners LP to increase its profitability.
• The new technology provides an opportunity to Golar LNG Partners LP to practices differentiated pricing strategy in the new market. It will enable the firm to maintain its loyal customers with great service and lure new customers through other value oriented propositions.
• Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of Golar LNG Partners LP’s products thus providing an opportunity to the company - either to boost its profitability or pass on the benefits to the customers to gain market share.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Golar LNG Partners LP an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
• Organization’s core competencies can be a success in similar other products field. A comparative example could be - GE healthcare research helped it in developing better Oil drilling machines.
• Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Golar LNG Partners LP products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
• New customers from online channel – Over the past few years the company has invested vast sum of money into the online platform. This investment has opened new sales channel for Golar LNG Partners LP. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.

Threats Golar LNG Partners LP Facing - External Strategic Factors

• Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Golar LNG Partners LP’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
• Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Golar LNG Partners LP profitability.
• Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Golar LNG Partners LP
• New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .
• The demand of the highly profitable products is seasonal in nature and any unlikely event during the peak season may impact the profitability of the company in short to medium term.
• No regular supply of innovative products – Over the years the company has developed numerous products but those are often response to the development by other players. Secondly the supply of new products is not regular thus leading to high and low swings in the sales number over period of time.
• Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Golar LNG Partners LP   in those markets.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Golar LNG Partners LP

Although the SWOT analysis is widely used as a strategic planning tool, the analysis does have its share of limitations.

• Certain capabilities or factors of an organization can be both a strength and weakness at the same time. This is one of the major limitations of SWOT analysis . For example changing environmental regulations can be both a threat to company it can also be an opportunity in a sense that it will enable the company to be on a level playing field or at advantage to competitors if it able to develop the products faster than the competitors.
• SWOT does not show how to achieve a competitive advantage, so it must not be an end in itself.
• The matrix is only a starting point for a discussion on how proposed strategies could be implemented. It provided an evaluation window but not an implementation plan based on strategic competitiveness of Golar LNG Partners LP
• SWOT is a static assessment - analysis of status quo with few prospective changes. As circumstances, capabilities, threats, and strategies change, the dynamics of a competitive environment may not be revealed in a single matrix.
• SWOT analysis may lead the firm to overemphasize a single internal or external factor in formulating strategies. There are interrelationships among the key internal and external factors that SWOT does not reveal that may be important in devising strategies.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Golar LNG Partners LP

In light of the above mentioned limitations of the SWOT analysis / matrix, corporate managers decided to provide weightage to each internal strength and weakness of the firm. Organizations also assess the likelihood of events taking place in the coming future and how strong their impact could be on company's performance.

This method is called Weighted SWOT analysis. It is better than doing simplistic SWOT analysis because with Weighted SWOT Analysis Golar LNG Partners LP managers can focus on the most critical factors and discount the non-important one. It also solves the long list problem where organizations ends up making a long list but none of the factors deemed too critical.

Limitation of Weighted SWOT analysis of Golar LNG Partners LP

This approach also suffers from one major drawback - it focus on individual importance of factor rather than how they are collectively important and impact the business holistically.

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Example of Weighted SWOT Analysis

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SWOT Worksheet & Template

If you like to do your own SWOT analysis or want to make your own Weighted SWOT SWOT matrix then feel free to download Fern Fort University SWOT Analysis Template.

References / Citations & Bibliography

• M. E. Porter, Competitive Strategy(New York: Free Press, 1980)
• A. D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962)
• O. E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies(New York: Free Press, 1975);
• L. Wrigley, Divisional Autonomy and Diversification (PhD, Harvard Business School, 1970)
• R. E. White, Generic Business Strategies, Organizational Context and Performance: An Empirical Investigation, Strategic Management Journal7 (1986)