SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Banca Carige (Italy)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Banca Carige is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, technology disruption, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing energy prices,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Banca Carige can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Banca Carige, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Banca Carige 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 Banca Carige can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Banca Carige
2. Improving business portfolio management of Banca Carige
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Italy
4. Making a Regional Banks sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Banca Carige
Strengths of Banca Carige | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Banca Carige are -
Strong track record of project management in the Regional Banks industry
– Banca Carige is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Banca Carige in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Banca Carige has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Banca Carige to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Banca Carige
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Banca Carige does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Banca Carige 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 Banca Carige is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Banca Carige emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Banca Carige 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Banca Carige 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.
Ability to lead change in Regional Banks
– Banca Carige is one of the leading players in the Regional Banks industry in Italy. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Regional Banks industry in Italy but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Banca Carige in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Innovation driven organization
– Banca Carige is one of the most innovative firm in Regional Banks sector.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Banca Carige has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Banca Carige has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Training and development
– Banca Carige has one of the best training and development program in Financial 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.
Analytics focus
– Banca Carige 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 Regional Banks industry. The technology infrastructure of Italy 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Regional Banks industry
– Banca Carige has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Banca Carige to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Regional Banks industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Banca Carige to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Weaknesses of Banca Carige | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Banca Carige are -
High bargaining power of channel partners in Regional Banks industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Italy, Banca Carige is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the Regional Banks industry.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Banca Carige 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Banca Carige products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Banca Carige needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Banca Carige is one of the leading players in the Regional Banks industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Regional Banks industry in last five years.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Banca Carige is just above the Regional Banks 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 decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Banca Carige has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Regional Banks industry over the last five years. Banca Carige 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Banca Carige is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Regional Banks industry, but Banca Carige needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Banca Carige to focus more on services in the Regional Banks industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Banca Carige has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Regional Banks 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 dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Banca Carige supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Banca Carige is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Banca Carige vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Banca Carige needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Regional Banks industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Banca Carige can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Banca Carige is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Banca Carige has some of the most successful models in the Regional Banks industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Banca Carige should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Banca Carige Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Banca Carige are -
Buying journey improvements
– Banca Carige can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Regional Banks 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Banca Carige 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 Banca Carige 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 Regional Banks industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Banca Carige can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Banca Carige is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Banca Carige can utilize new technology in the field of Regional Banks industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Banca Carige can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Banca Carige 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 Banca Carige to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Banca Carige 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Regional Banks industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Banca Carige 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. Banca Carige 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Banca Carige to increase its market reach. Banca Carige 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Banca Carige can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Banca Carige can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Banca Carige operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Regional Banks sector.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Banca Carige has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Regional Banks industry. This can help Banca Carige to build a more holistic ecosystem for Banca Carige products in the Regional Banks industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Banca Carige 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 Regional Banks industry.
Threats Banca Carige External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Banca Carige are -
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 Banca Carige.
Regulatory challenges
– Banca Carige needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Regional Banks industry regulations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Banca Carige 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 Banca Carige prominent markets.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Regional Banks industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Banca Carige can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Banca Carige may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Regional Banks sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Banca Carige 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 Regional Banks industry and other sectors.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Banca Carige 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Regional Banks industry are lowering. It can presents Banca Carige with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Regional Banks 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 Banca Carige 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. Banca Carige needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Regional Banks industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Banca Carige is facing in Regional Banks sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Banca Carige has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Regional Banks industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Banca Carige needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Regional Banks 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Banca Carige Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Banca Carige 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 Banca Carige 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 Banca Carige 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 Banca Carige 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 Banca Carige needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.