Lakshmi Finance and Industrial (LFIC) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Lakshmi Finance and Industrial (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Lakshmi Finance and Industrial is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing energy prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Lakshmi Finance and Industrial can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Lakshmi Finance and Industrial, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Lakshmi Finance and Industrial operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial
2. Improving business portfolio management of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial
Strengths of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial is one of the leading players in the industry in India. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in India. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
High brand equity
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Lakshmi Finance and Industrial to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Lakshmi Finance and Industrial a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to lead change in
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial is one of the leading players in the industry in India. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in India but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Lakshmi Finance and Industrial in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Training and development
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial has one of the best training and development program in industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Organizational Resilience of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Lakshmi Finance and Industrial does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Lakshmi Finance and Industrial has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Lakshmi Finance and Industrial are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Lakshmi Finance and Industrial is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Lakshmi Finance and Industrial is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Lakshmi Finance and Industrial emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Lakshmi Finance and Industrial digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Lakshmi Finance and Industrial has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Weaknesses of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Lakshmi Finance and Industrial needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Lakshmi Finance and Industrial can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Lakshmi Finance and Industrial is planning to shift buying processes online.
Employees’ less understanding of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Need for greater diversity
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Lakshmi Finance and Industrial needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Lakshmi Finance and Industrial has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Lakshmi Finance and Industrial has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Lakshmi Finance and Industrial even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial is just above the industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Lakshmi Finance and Industrial is one of the leading players in the industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Lakshmi Finance and Industrial, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Lakshmi Finance and Industrial has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Lakshmi Finance and Industrial has high operating costs in the industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Lakshmi Finance and Industrial lucrative customers.
Lakshmi Finance and Industrial Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial are -
Buying journey improvements
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Lakshmi Finance and Industrial can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Lakshmi Finance and Industrial can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help Lakshmi Finance and Industrial to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Lakshmi Finance and Industrial to build a more holistic ecosystem for Lakshmi Finance and Industrial products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial can develop new processes and procedures in industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Lakshmi Finance and Industrial is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Lakshmi Finance and Industrial can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Lakshmi Finance and Industrial in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Lakshmi Finance and Industrial to increase its market reach. Lakshmi Finance and Industrial will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Lakshmi Finance and Industrial can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Lakshmi Finance and Industrial operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Lakshmi Finance and Industrial to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Lakshmi Finance and Industrial to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Lakshmi Finance and Industrial to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Lakshmi Finance and Industrial to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Lakshmi Finance and Industrial can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats Lakshmi Finance and Industrial External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial are -
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Lakshmi Finance and Industrial needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Lakshmi Finance and Industrial with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the industry.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Lakshmi Finance and Industrial will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Lakshmi Finance and Industrial needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Lakshmi Finance and Industrial may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of sector.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Lakshmi Finance and Industrial needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Lakshmi Finance and Industrial can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Lakshmi Finance and Industrial demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in industry and other sectors.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Lakshmi Finance and Industrial needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Lakshmi Finance and Industrial to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Lakshmi Finance and Industrial needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.