Protector Fors (0JXF) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Insurance (Life)
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Protector Fors (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Protector Fors is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – technology disruption, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Protector Fors can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Protector Fors, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Protector Fors 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 Protector Fors can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Protector Fors
2. Improving business portfolio management of Protector Fors
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Insurance (Life) sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Protector Fors
Strengths of Protector Fors | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Protector Fors are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Protector Fors is one of the leading players in the Insurance (Life) industry in United Kingdom. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United Kingdom. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Analytics focus
– Protector Fors 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 Insurance (Life) 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.
Digital Transformation in Insurance (Life) industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Protector Fors digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Protector Fors 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Protector Fors comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Insurance (Life) 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Protector Fors has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Protector Fors staying ahead in the Insurance (Life) industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Protector Fors in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Protector Fors has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Protector Fors to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Learning organization
- Protector Fors 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 Protector Fors is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Protector Fors emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Protector Fors 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 Protector Fors 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.
Training and development
– Protector Fors 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Insurance (Life) industry
– Protector Fors has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Protector Fors to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Insurance (Life) industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Protector Fors to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Protector Fors is present in almost all the verticals within the Insurance (Life) industry. This has provided Protector Fors 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.
Weaknesses of Protector Fors | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Protector Fors are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Protector Fors products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Protector Fors needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Protector Fors, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Insurance (Life) 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 Protector Fors needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Insurance (Life) industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Protector Fors can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Protector Fors is planning to shift buying processes online.
Employees’ less understanding of Protector Fors strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Protector Fors 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Protector Fors is just above the Insurance (Life) 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Protector Fors has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Insurance (Life) industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Skills based hiring in Insurance (Life) industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Protector Fors 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Protector Fors, in the dynamic environment of Insurance (Life) industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Protector Fors 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, Protector Fors has high operating costs in the Insurance (Life) industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Protector Fors lucrative customers.
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 Protector Fors supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Protector Fors is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Protector Fors vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– Protector Fors 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.
Protector Fors Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Protector Fors are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Protector Fors 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Protector Fors can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Insurance (Life) 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Insurance (Life) industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Protector Fors 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. Protector Fors 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Protector Fors can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Protector Fors operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Insurance (Life) sector.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Protector Fors in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Insurance (Life) industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Protector Fors has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Insurance (Life) industry. This can help Protector Fors to build a more holistic ecosystem for Protector Fors products in the Insurance (Life) industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Protector Fors can develop new processes and procedures in Insurance (Life) 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Protector Fors can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Protector Fors to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Loyalty marketing
– Protector Fors 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Protector Fors has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Insurance (Life) sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Protector Fors to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Protector Fors to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Protector Fors 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 Insurance (Life) industry.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Protector Fors 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 Protector Fors to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Protector Fors External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Protector Fors are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Protector Fors is facing in Insurance (Life) sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Protector Fors has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Insurance (Life) industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Protector Fors needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Insurance (Life) 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Protector Fors 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 Insurance (Life) industry and other sectors.
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. Protector Fors 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
– Protector Fors 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 Insurance (Life) industry.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Insurance (Life) industry are lowering. It can presents Protector Fors with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Insurance (Life) 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 Protector Fors business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Protector Fors 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 Insurance (Life) industry regulations.
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. Protector Fors needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Insurance (Life) industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Protector Fors in Insurance (Life) industry. The Insurance (Life) 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 Insurance (Life) industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Protector Fors can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Protector Fors 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 Protector Fors prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Protector Fors Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Protector Fors 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 Protector Fors 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 Protector Fors 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 Protector Fors 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 Protector Fors needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.