Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – technology disruption, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC
2. Improving business portfolio management of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC
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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC
Strengths of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
High brand equity
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Digital Transformation in Investment Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Investment Services industry
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC in Investment Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC is one of the leading players in the Investment 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC is present in almost all the verticals within the Investment Services industry. This has provided Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Ability to lead change in Investment Services
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC is one of the leading players in the Investment Services industry in United Kingdom. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Investment Services industry in United Kingdom but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Investment Services industry, but Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC to focus more on services in the Investment Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC, in the dynamic environment of Investment Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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. Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the Investment Services industry using digital technology.
Skills based hiring in Investment Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC, 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC are -
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Investment Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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. Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Investment Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Investment Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Manufacturing automation
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Buying journey improvements
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Threats Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC are -
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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC.
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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC in the Investment Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC.
Environmental challenges
– Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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. Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Investment Services industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
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. Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Investment Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC prominent markets.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC is facing in Investment Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Investment Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC 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 Honeycomb Investment Trust PLC needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
