Iron Mountain Incorporated SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Iron Mountain Incorporated managers to do a situational analysis of the organization . It is a useful technique to understand the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Iron Mountain Incorporated is facing in its current business environment.

The Iron Mountain Incorporated is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Iron Mountain Incorporated maintains its dominant position in market by carefully analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis a highly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the organization such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.

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The SWOT Analysis framework facilitates 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 enables the managers of the Iron Mountain Incorporated to develop four types of strategies:

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

Iron Mountain Incorporated swot analysis / matrix

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 Iron Mountain Incorporated strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Iron Mountain Incorporated SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Iron Mountain Incorporated – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, Iron Mountain Incorporated has numerous strengths that help 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 Iron Mountain Incorporated are –

Read - Iron Mountain Incorporated Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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Strong Free Cash Flow – Iron Mountain Incorporated 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 Iron Mountain Incorporated 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.
Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.
Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Iron Mountain Incorporated is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
Superb Performance in New Markets – Iron Mountain Incorporated 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 skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Iron Mountain Incorporated 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.

Weakness of Iron Mountain Incorporated – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Iron Mountain Incorporated 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.
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 Iron Mountain Incorporated is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Iron Mountain Incorporated 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 Iron Mountain Incorporated
High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Iron Mountain Incorporated has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
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. Iron Mountain Incorporated has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.

Opportunities for Iron Mountain Incorporated – External Strategic Factors

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The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Iron Mountain Incorporated to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
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.
Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Iron Mountain Incorporated to capture new customers and increase its market share.
Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Iron Mountain Incorporated.
Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Iron Mountain Incorporated an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
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 Iron Mountain Incorporated. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Iron Mountain Incorporated products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Iron Mountain Incorporated . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.

Threats Iron Mountain Incorporated Facing - External Strategic Factors

Intense competition – Stable profitability has increased the number of players in the industry over last two years which has put downward pressure on not only profitability but also on overall sales.
Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.
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.
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.
Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Iron Mountain Incorporated profitability.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Iron Mountain Incorporated

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 Iron Mountain Incorporated
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 Iron Mountain Incorporated

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 Iron Mountain Incorporated 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 Iron Mountain Incorporated

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)