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Penn West Petroleum Ltd. SWOT Analysis / Matrix
Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers
SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that can be used by Penn West Petroleum Ltd. managers to do a situational analysis of the organization . It is a handy technique to understand the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Penn West Petroleum Ltd. is facing in its current business environment.
The Penn West Petroleum Ltd. is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Penn West Petroleum Ltd. maintains its prominent position in market by carefully analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis an immensenly 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 known as SWOT Matrix.
The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the Penn West Petroleum Ltd. 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 use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Penn West Petroleum Ltd. strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.
Step by Step Guide to Penn West Petroleum Ltd. SWOT Analysis
Strengths of Penn West Petroleum Ltd. – Internal Strategic Factors
As one of the leading companies in its industry, Penn West Petroleum Ltd. 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 Penn West Petroleum Ltd. are –
Read - Penn West Petroleum Ltd. Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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- 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.
- High level of customer satisfaction – the company with its dedicated customer relationship management department has able to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction among present customers and good brand equity among the potential customers.
- Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Penn West Petroleum Ltd. is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
- Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Penn West Petroleum Ltd. products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
- Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
- 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.
- Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Penn West Petroleum Ltd. 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.
- Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Penn West Petroleum Ltd. has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Penn West Petroleum Ltd. just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
Weakness of Penn West Petroleum Ltd. – Internal Strategic Factors
Weakness are the areas where Penn West Petroleum Ltd. 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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- Not very good at product demand forecasting leading to higher rate of missed opportunities compare to its competitors. One of the reason why the days inventory is high compare to its competitors is that Penn West Petroleum Ltd. is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
- 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. Penn West Petroleum Ltd. has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
- 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 Penn West Petroleum Ltd.
- The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Penn West Petroleum Ltd. are below the industry average.
- High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Penn West Petroleum Ltd. has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
- Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Penn West Petroleum Ltd. 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.
- 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.
Opportunities for Penn West Petroleum Ltd. – 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 Penn West Petroleum Ltd. to capture new customers and increase its market share.
- The new technology provides an opportunity to Penn West Petroleum Ltd. 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.
- Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Penn West Petroleum Ltd. an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
- Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Penn West Petroleum Ltd. products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
- The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Penn West Petroleum Ltd. to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
- 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 Penn West Petroleum Ltd.. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
- Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of Penn West Petroleum Ltd.’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.
- Stable free cash flow provides opportunities to invest in adjacent product segments. With more cash in bank the company can invest in new technologies as well as in new products segments. This should open a window of opportunity for Penn West Petroleum Ltd. in other product categories.
Threats Penn West Petroleum Ltd. Facing - External Strategic Factors
- Liability laws in different countries are different and Penn West Petroleum Ltd. may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
- Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
- 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.
- As the company is operating in numerous countries it is exposed to currency fluctuations especially given the volatile political climate in number of markets across the world.
- Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
- Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Penn West Petroleum Ltd. profitability.
- Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Penn West Petroleum Ltd.
Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Penn West Petroleum Ltd.
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 Penn West Petroleum Ltd.
- 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 Penn West Petroleum Ltd.
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 Penn West Petroleum Ltd. 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 Penn West Petroleum Ltd.
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)
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