Santander Bank Polska (0DVR) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Money Center Banks
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Santander Bank Polska (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Santander Bank Polska is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing household debt because of falling income levels, technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Santander Bank Polska
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Santander Bank Polska can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Santander Bank Polska, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Santander Bank Polska 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 Santander Bank Polska can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Santander Bank Polska
2. Improving business portfolio management of Santander Bank Polska
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Money Center Banks sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Santander Bank Polska
Strengths of Santander Bank Polska | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Santander Bank Polska are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Money Center Banks industry
– Santander Bank Polska has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Santander Bank Polska to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Money Center Banks industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Santander Bank Polska to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Money Center Banks
– Santander Bank Polska is one of the leading players in the Money Center Banks industry in United Kingdom. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Money Center Banks industry in United Kingdom but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Santander Bank Polska in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management in the Money Center Banks industry
– Santander Bank Polska is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Analytics focus
– Santander Bank Polska 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 Money Center Banks industry. The technology infrastructure of United Kingdom 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)
– Santander Bank Polska has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Santander Bank Polska staying ahead in the Money Center Banks industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Innovation driven organization
– Santander Bank Polska is one of the most innovative firm in Money Center Banks sector.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Santander Bank Polska 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Santander Bank Polska has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Money Center Banks industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Santander Bank Polska have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Santander Bank Polska 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.
Organizational Resilience of Santander Bank Polska
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Santander Bank Polska does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Santander Bank Polska in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Santander Bank Polska has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Santander Bank Polska to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Digital Transformation in Money Center Banks industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Santander Bank Polska digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Santander Bank Polska 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 Santander Bank Polska | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Santander Bank Polska are -
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 Santander Bank Polska supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Santander Bank Polska is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Santander Bank Polska vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Santander Bank Polska, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Money Center Banks 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 Santander Bank Polska needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Money Center Banks industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Santander Bank Polska can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Santander Bank Polska is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on Santander Bank Polska ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Santander Bank Polska still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Money Center Banks industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Santander Bank Polska has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Employees’ less understanding of Santander Bank Polska strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Santander Bank Polska 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Santander Bank Polska 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Santander Bank Polska 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Santander Bank Polska is one of the leading players in the Money Center Banks industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Money Center Banks industry in last five years.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Santander Bank Polska has some of the most successful models in the Money Center Banks industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Santander Bank Polska should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Santander Bank Polska has high operating costs in the Money Center Banks industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Santander Bank Polska lucrative customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Santander Bank Polska products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Santander Bank Polska needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Santander Bank Polska Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Santander Bank Polska are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Santander Bank Polska 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 Money Center Banks industry.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Santander Bank Polska can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Santander Bank Polska operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Money Center Banks sector.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Santander Bank Polska 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 Santander Bank Polska to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Money Center Banks industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Santander Bank Polska 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. Santander Bank Polska 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Santander Bank Polska 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Santander Bank Polska is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Santander Bank Polska can utilize new technology in the field of Money Center Banks 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 Santander Bank Polska can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Santander Bank Polska 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 Santander Bank Polska in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Money Center Banks industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Santander Bank Polska 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Santander Bank Polska has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Money Center Banks sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Santander Bank Polska to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Santander Bank Polska to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Santander Bank Polska to increase its market reach. Santander Bank Polska 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Santander Bank Polska can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Threats Santander Bank Polska External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Santander Bank Polska are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Santander Bank Polska 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 Money Center Banks industry and other sectors.
Environmental challenges
– Santander Bank Polska 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. Santander Bank Polska can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Money Center Banks industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Money Center Banks industry are lowering. It can presents Santander Bank Polska with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Money Center Banks sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Santander Bank Polska 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Santander Bank Polska 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 Santander Bank Polska prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Santander Bank Polska is facing in Money Center Banks sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Santander Bank Polska may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Money Center Banks sector.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Money Center Banks industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Santander Bank Polska can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Santander Bank Polska 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Santander Bank Polska 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 Money Center Banks industry.
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. Santander Bank Polska needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Money Center Banks industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Santander Bank Polska Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Santander Bank Polska 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 Santander Bank Polska 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 Santander Bank Polska 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 Santander Bank Polska 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 Santander Bank Polska needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
