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Scottish Investment (SCIN) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Scottish Investment (United Kingdom)


Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Scottish Investment is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , wage bills are increasing, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing commodity prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc



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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Scottish Investment


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




Strengths of Scottish Investment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Scottish Investment are -

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

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

Learning organization

- Scottish Investment 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 Scottish Investment is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Scottish Investment emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Scottish Investment in Misc. Financial Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

Successful track record of launching new products

– Scottish Investment has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Scottish Investment 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.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

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

Organizational Resilience of Scottish Investment

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

Sustainable margins compare to other players in Misc. Financial Services industry

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

High brand equity

– Scottish Investment has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Scottish Investment to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Diverse revenue streams

– Scottish Investment is present in almost all the verticals within the Misc. Financial Services industry. This has provided Scottish Investment a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Scottish Investment is one of the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services 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.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Scottish Investment comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Misc. Financial 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.

Strong track record of project management in the Misc. Financial Services industry

– Scottish Investment is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.






Weaknesses of Scottish Investment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Scottish Investment are -

Need for greater diversity

– Scottish Investment 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.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Misc. Financial Services industry, Scottish Investment needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that Scottish Investment needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Misc. Financial Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Scottish Investment can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Scottish Investment is planning to shift buying processes online.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Scottish Investment has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Misc. Financial 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.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

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

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Scottish Investment, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Misc. Financial 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.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Scottish Investment has high operating costs in the Misc. Financial Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Scottish Investment lucrative customers.

High bargaining power of channel partners in Misc. Financial Services industry

– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Scottish Investment 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 Misc. Financial Services industry.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Scottish Investment is just above the Misc. Financial 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.

Slow decision making process

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

Employees’ less understanding of Scottish Investment strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Scottish Investment 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.




Scottish Investment Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis


The opportunities of Scottish Investment are -

Lowering marketing communication costs

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

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Scottish Investment 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 Scottish Investment to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Increase in government spending

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

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Scottish Investment is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Scottish Investment can utilize new technology in the field of Misc. Financial Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Scottish Investment 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.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Scottish Investment 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.

Developing new processes and practices

– Scottish Investment can develop new processes and procedures in Misc. Financial 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.

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 Scottish Investment 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.

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. Scottish Investment can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Misc. Financial Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Scottish Investment 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. Scottish Investment 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.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Scottish Investment can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

Finding new ways to collaborate

– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Misc. Financial Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Scottish Investment can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.

Creating value in data economy

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




Threats Scottish Investment External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis


The threats of Scottish Investment are -

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 Scottish Investment in the Misc. Financial Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Scottish Investment is facing in Misc. Financial Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

Environmental challenges

– Scottish Investment 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. Scottish Investment can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Misc. Financial Services industry.

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Misc. Financial Services industry are lowering. It can presents Scottish Investment with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Misc. Financial Services sector.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Scottish Investment 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 Misc. Financial Services industry and other sectors.

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 Scottish Investment business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

Regulatory challenges

– Scottish Investment 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 Misc. Financial Services industry regulations.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Scottish Investment 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 Scottish Investment prominent markets.

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.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Scottish Investment 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 Misc. Financial Services industry.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Scottish Investment high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.

Instability in the European markets

– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Scottish Investment 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.




Weighted SWOT Analysis of Scottish Investment Template, Example


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



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