SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Henderson Eurotrust (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Henderson Eurotrust is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, geopolitical disruptions, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, technology disruption, increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Henderson Eurotrust
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Henderson Eurotrust can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Henderson Eurotrust, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Henderson Eurotrust 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 Henderson Eurotrust can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Henderson Eurotrust
2. Improving business portfolio management of Henderson Eurotrust
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 Henderson Eurotrust
Strengths of Henderson Eurotrust | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Henderson Eurotrust are -
High brand equity
– Henderson Eurotrust has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Henderson Eurotrust to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Henderson Eurotrust has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Digital Transformation in Misc. Financial Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Henderson Eurotrust digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Henderson Eurotrust is one of the most innovative firm in Misc. Financial Services sector.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Henderson Eurotrust in Misc. Financial Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to lead change in Misc. Financial Services
– Henderson Eurotrust is one of the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services industry in United Kingdom. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Misc. Financial Services industry in United Kingdom but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Henderson Eurotrust in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Misc. Financial Services industry
– Henderson Eurotrust has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Henderson Eurotrust to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Misc. Financial Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Henderson Eurotrust to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Henderson Eurotrust has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Learning organization
- Henderson Eurotrust 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 Henderson Eurotrust is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Henderson Eurotrust emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Henderson Eurotrust is present in almost all the verticals within the Misc. Financial Services industry. This has provided Henderson Eurotrust 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 Henderson Eurotrust | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Henderson Eurotrust are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Henderson Eurotrust 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 Misc. Financial Services industry using digital technology.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Misc. Financial Services industry, Henderson Eurotrust 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Henderson Eurotrust, 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Henderson Eurotrust strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Henderson Eurotrust 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 Henderson Eurotrust 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 to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Henderson Eurotrust is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Henderson Eurotrust to provide better information regarding Misc. Financial Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Henderson Eurotrust products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Henderson Eurotrust needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Henderson Eurotrust 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 Henderson Eurotrust can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Henderson Eurotrust is planning to shift buying processes online.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Henderson Eurotrust 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 Henderson Eurotrust lucrative customers.
Skills based hiring in Misc. Financial Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Henderson Eurotrust Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Henderson Eurotrust are -
Loyalty marketing
– Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Henderson Eurotrust can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Misc. Financial 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Henderson Eurotrust can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Misc. Financial 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Henderson Eurotrust 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 Henderson Eurotrust to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Misc. Financial Services industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Henderson Eurotrust in the Misc. Financial Services industry. Now Henderson Eurotrust can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Henderson Eurotrust 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 Henderson Eurotrust to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Henderson Eurotrust 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. Henderson Eurotrust can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Henderson Eurotrust has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Misc. Financial Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Henderson Eurotrust to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Henderson Eurotrust to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Henderson Eurotrust is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Threats Henderson Eurotrust External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Henderson Eurotrust are -
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. Henderson Eurotrust 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.
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 Henderson Eurotrust business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Henderson Eurotrust 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.
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.
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 Henderson Eurotrust in the Misc. Financial Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Henderson Eurotrust 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 Henderson Eurotrust prominent markets.
Increasing wage structure of Henderson Eurotrust
– 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 Henderson Eurotrust.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Misc. Financial Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Henderson Eurotrust can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Henderson Eurotrust needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Misc. Financial Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Misc. Financial Services industry are lowering. It can presents Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Henderson Eurotrust in Misc. Financial Services industry. The Misc. Financial 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 dependence on third party suppliers
– Henderson Eurotrust 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Henderson Eurotrust has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Misc. Financial Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Henderson Eurotrust needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Misc. Financial 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Henderson Eurotrust Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Henderson Eurotrust 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 Henderson Eurotrust 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 Henderson Eurotrust 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 Henderson Eurotrust 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 Henderson Eurotrust needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.