Plymouth Minerals Limited SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that can be used by Plymouth Minerals Limited managers to do a situational analysis of the firm . It is a useful technique to evalauate the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Plymouth Minerals Limited is facing in its current business environment.

The Plymouth Minerals Limited is one of the leading firms in its industry. Plymouth Minerals Limited 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 company 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 Plymouth Minerals Limited to develop four types of strategies:

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

Plymouth Minerals Limited swot analysis / matrix

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The primary purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Plymouth Minerals Limited strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Plymouth Minerals Limited SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Plymouth Minerals Limited – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading firms in its industry, Plymouth Minerals Limited 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 Plymouth Minerals Limited are –

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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 Plymouth Minerals Limited has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Plymouth Minerals Limited just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
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 – Plymouth Minerals Limited 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.
Strong Free Cash Flow – Plymouth Minerals Limited has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Plymouth Minerals Limited products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Plymouth Minerals Limited is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.

Weakness of Plymouth Minerals Limited – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Plymouth Minerals Limited can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a firm can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

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The marketing of the products left a lot to be desired. Even though the product is a success in terms of sale but its positioning and unique selling proposition is not clearly defined which can lead to the attacks in this segment from the competitors.
Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Plymouth Minerals Limited 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.
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.
Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Plymouth Minerals Limited is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
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. Plymouth Minerals Limited has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
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 Plymouth Minerals Limited

Opportunities for Plymouth Minerals Limited – External Strategic Factors

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The new technology provides an opportunity to Plymouth Minerals Limited 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.
The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Plymouth Minerals Limited to increase its profitability.
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 Plymouth Minerals Limited. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Plymouth Minerals Limited an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
New environmental policies – The new opportunities will create a level playing field for all the players in the industry. It represent a great opportunity for Plymouth Minerals Limited to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Plymouth Minerals Limited . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Plymouth Minerals Limited.
Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Plymouth Minerals Limited products by the state as well as federal government contractors.

Threats Plymouth Minerals Limited Facing - External Strategic Factors

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.
Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Plymouth Minerals Limited profitability.
Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Plymouth Minerals Limited
Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Plymouth Minerals Limited’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Plymouth Minerals Limited in those markets.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Plymouth Minerals Limited

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 Plymouth Minerals Limited
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 Plymouth Minerals Limited

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 Plymouth Minerals Limited 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 Plymouth Minerals Limited

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

You can email us to get an example document of Weighted SWOT analysis.

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)