SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for PLT Financial Services (Israel)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , PLT Financial Services is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
wage bills are increasing, technology disruption, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of PLT Financial Services
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that PLT Financial Services can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the PLT Financial Services, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which PLT Financial Services 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 PLT Financial Services can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of PLT Financial Services
2. Improving business portfolio management of PLT Financial Services
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Israel
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of PLT Financial Services
Strengths of PLT Financial Services | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of PLT Financial Services are -
Analytics focus
– PLT Financial Services is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure of Israel is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– PLT Financial Services has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – PLT Financial Services staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– PLT Financial Services has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled PLT Financial Services to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped PLT Financial Services to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– PLT Financial Services is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the PLT Financial Services 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of PLT Financial Services in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that PLT Financial Services 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– PLT Financial Services is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided PLT Financial Services 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– PLT Financial Services is one of the leading players in the industry in Israel. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Israel. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Innovation driven organization
– PLT Financial Services is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Ability to lead change in
– PLT Financial Services is one of the leading players in the industry in Israel. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in Israel but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled PLT Financial Services in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High brand equity
– PLT Financial Services has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled PLT Financial Services to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Weaknesses of PLT Financial Services | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of PLT Financial Services are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though PLT Financial Services has some of the most successful models in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. PLT Financial Services should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– PLT Financial Services 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of PLT Financial Services, 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, PLT Financial Services has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
High dependence on PLT Financial Services ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of PLT Financial Services still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though PLT Financial Services has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, PLT Financial Services is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help PLT Financial Services to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
PLT Financial Services has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, PLT Financial Services 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 PLT Financial Services lucrative customers.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at PLT Financial Services has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As PLT Financial Services 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of PLT Financial Services products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, PLT Financial Services needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
PLT Financial Services Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of PLT Financial Services are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for PLT Financial Services 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. PLT Financial Services can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. PLT Financial Services can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Loyalty marketing
– PLT Financial Services 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.
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. PLT Financial Services can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for PLT Financial Services to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for PLT Financial Services 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 PLT Financial Services to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– PLT Financial Services 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 PLT Financial Services to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help PLT Financial Services to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, PLT Financial Services can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that PLT Financial Services operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Manufacturing automation
– PLT Financial Services can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, PLT Financial Services is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. PLT Financial Services 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects PLT Financial Services can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at PLT Financial Services can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the industry.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help PLT Financial Services to increase its market reach. PLT Financial Services 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.
Threats PLT Financial Services External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of PLT Financial Services are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for PLT Financial Services in industry. The industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. PLT Financial Services can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– PLT Financial Services 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, PLT Financial Services can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate PLT Financial Services prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that PLT Financial Services is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of PLT Financial Services
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of PLT Financial Services.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents PLT Financial Services with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, PLT Financial Services 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.
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 PLT Financial Services business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. PLT Financial Services needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– PLT Financial Services 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.
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. PLT Financial Services 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.
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 PLT Financial Services.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of PLT Financial Services Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at PLT Financial Services 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 PLT Financial Services 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 PLT Financial Services 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 PLT Financial Services 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 PLT Financial Services needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.