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St. James’s Place (SJP) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for St. James’s Place (United Kingdom)


Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , St. James’s Place is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, geopolitical disruptions, etc



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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of St. James’s Place


SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that St. James’s Place can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the St. James’s Place, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which St. James’s Place 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 St. James’s Place can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of St. James’s Place
2. Improving business portfolio management of St. James’s Place
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Investment Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of St. James’s Place




Strengths of St. James’s Place | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of St. James’s Place are -

Training and development

– St. James’s Place 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.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of St. James’s Place in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. St. James’s Place has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps St. James’s Place to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Highly skilled collaborators

– St. James’s Place has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Investment Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of St. James’s Place have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Diverse revenue streams

– St. James’s Place is present in almost all the verticals within the Investment Services industry. This has provided St. James’s Place 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.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– St. James’s Place has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – St. James’s Place staying ahead in the Investment Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

Organizational Resilience of St. James’s Place

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing St. James’s Place does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Digital Transformation in Investment Services industry

- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For St. James’s Place digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. St. James’s Place 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.

Learning organization

- St. James’s Place 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 St. James’s Place is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at St. James’s Place emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of St. James’s Place in Investment Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

Sustainable margins compare to other players in Investment Services industry

– St. James’s Place has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled St. James’s Place to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Investment Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped St. James’s Place to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of St. James’s Place comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Investment Services 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.

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that St. James’s Place 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.






Weaknesses of St. James’s Place | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of St. James’s Place are -

High dependence on St. James’s Place ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of St. James’s Place still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Investment Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though St. James’s Place has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

St. James’s Place has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Investment Services industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of St. James’s Place is just above the Investment Services 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.

Employees’ less understanding of St. James’s Place strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of St. James’s Place 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, St. James’s Place 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.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, St. James’s Place has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Investment Services industry over the last five years. St. James’s Place 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.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As St. James’s Place is one of the leading players in the Investment Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Investment Services industry in last five years.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

– The organizational structure of St. James’s Place is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Investment Services industry, but St. James’s Place needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help St. James’s Place to focus more on services in the Investment Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.

Ability to respond to the competition

– As the decision making is very deliberative at St. James’s Place, in the dynamic environment of Investment Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. St. James’s Place has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.

Products dominated business model

– Even though St. James’s Place has some of the most successful models in the Investment Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. St. James’s Place should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of St. James’s Place, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Investment Services 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.




St. James’s Place Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis


The opportunities of St. James’s Place are -

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help St. James’s Place to increase its market reach. St. James’s Place 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.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at St. James’s Place 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 Investment Services industry.

Developing new processes and practices

– St. James’s Place can develop new processes and procedures in Investment Services 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.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, St. James’s Place can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that St. James’s Place operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Investment Services sector.

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of St. James’s Place has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Investment Services industry. This can help St. James’s Place to build a more holistic ecosystem for St. James’s Place products in the Investment Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

Buying journey improvements

– St. James’s Place can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Investment Services 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.

Manufacturing automation

– St. James’s Place can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Investment Services 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, St. James’s Place is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. St. James’s Place can utilize new technology in the field of Investment Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for St. James’s Place in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Investment Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, St. James’s Place 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 St. James’s Place to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Loyalty marketing

– St. James’s Place 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.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for St. James’s Place 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 St. James’s Place to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Identify volunteer opportunities

– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. St. James’s Place can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.




Threats St. James’s Place External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis


The threats of St. James’s Place are -

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.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– St. James’s Place 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.

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 St. James’s Place business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

Regulatory challenges

– St. James’s Place 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 Investment Services industry regulations.

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 St. James’s Place.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that St. James’s Place is facing in Investment Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– St. James’s Place 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 Investment Services industry.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, St. James’s Place may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Investment Services sector.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for St. James’s Place in Investment Services industry. The Investment Services 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.

New competition

– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for St. James’s Place in the Investment Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– St. James’s Place has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Investment Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, St. James’s Place needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Investment Services 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.

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. St. James’s Place 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.

Consumer confidence and its impact on St. James’s Place 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 Investment Services industry and other sectors.




Weighted SWOT Analysis of St. James’s Place Template, Example


Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at St. James’s Place 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 St. James’s Place 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 St. James’s Place 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 St. James’s Place 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 St. James’s Place needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.



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