Victoria Oil & Gas Plc SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that can be used by Victoria Oil & Gas Plc managers to do a situational analysis of the organization . It is a handy technique to analyze the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Victoria Oil & Gas Plc is facing in its current business environment.

The Victoria Oil & Gas Plc is one of the leading companies in its industry. Victoria Oil & Gas Plc maintains its dominant 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 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 called SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the Victoria Oil & Gas Plc to develop four types of strategies:

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

Victoria Oil & Gas Plc swot analysis / matrix

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The primary purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that an organization can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Victoria Oil & Gas Plc strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Victoria Oil & Gas Plc SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Victoria Oil & Gas Plc – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, Victoria Oil & Gas Plc 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 Victoria Oil & Gas Plc are –

Read - Victoria Oil & Gas Plc Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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Strong Free Cash Flow – Victoria Oil & Gas Plc has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
Superb Performance in New Markets – Victoria Oil & Gas Plc 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 Brand Portfolio – Over the years Victoria Oil & Gas Plc has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Victoria Oil & Gas Plc 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.
Strong distribution network – Over the years Victoria Oil & Gas Plc has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Victoria Oil & Gas Plc 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.
Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.

Weakness of Victoria Oil & Gas Plc – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Victoria Oil & Gas Plc can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a company can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

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Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Victoria Oil & Gas Plc 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.
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 Victoria Oil & Gas Plc
Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Victoria Oil & Gas Plc is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Victoria Oil & Gas Plc 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.
Financial planning is not done properly and efficiently. The current asset ratio and liquid asset ratios suggest that the company can use the cash more efficiently than what it is doing at present.
The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Victoria Oil & Gas Plc are below the industry average.

Opportunities for Victoria Oil & Gas Plc – External Strategic Factors

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The new technology provides an opportunity to Victoria Oil & Gas Plc 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.
Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Victoria Oil & Gas Plc to capture new customers and increase its market share.
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 Victoria Oil & Gas Plc. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Victoria Oil & Gas Plc to increase its profitability.
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 Victoria Oil & Gas Plc to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Victoria Oil & Gas Plc to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Victoria Oil & Gas Plc . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Victoria Oil & Gas Plc an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.

Threats Victoria Oil & Gas Plc Facing - External Strategic Factors

Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Victoria Oil & Gas Plc in those markets.
Liability laws in different countries are different and Victoria Oil & Gas Plc 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.
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.
Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Victoria Oil & Gas Plc profitability.
Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Victoria Oil & Gas Plc’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Victoria Oil & Gas Plc

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Victoria Oil & Gas Plc

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 Victoria Oil & Gas Plc
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 Victoria Oil & Gas Plc

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 Victoria Oil & Gas Plc 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 Victoria Oil & Gas Plc

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)