Charles Taylor (CTR) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Insurance (Miscellaneous)
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Charles Taylor (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Charles Taylor is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is backlash against globalization, wage bills are increasing, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing commodity prices, technology disruption, increasing energy prices,
customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Charles Taylor can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Charles Taylor, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Charles Taylor 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 Charles Taylor can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Charles Taylor
2. Improving business portfolio management of Charles Taylor
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Insurance (Miscellaneous) sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Charles Taylor
Strengths of Charles Taylor | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Charles Taylor are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Charles Taylor in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Charles Taylor has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Charles Taylor to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Charles Taylor 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 Charles Taylor 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.
Learning organization
- Charles Taylor 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 Charles Taylor is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Charles Taylor emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Charles Taylor in Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Charles Taylor is one of the leading players in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) 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.
High brand equity
– Charles Taylor has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Charles Taylor to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry
– Charles Taylor has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Charles Taylor to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Charles Taylor to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Charles Taylor
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Charles Taylor does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Analytics focus
– Charles Taylor 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 (Miscellaneous) 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Charles Taylor comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Charles Taylor has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Charles Taylor 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.
Weaknesses of Charles Taylor | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Charles Taylor are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry, Charles Taylor 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Charles Taylor products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Charles Taylor needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Charles Taylor 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 Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Charles Taylor has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Charles Taylor has high operating costs in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Charles Taylor lucrative customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Charles Taylor 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Charles Taylor, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Insurance (Miscellaneous) 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Charles Taylor has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Charles Taylor 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 Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry using digital technology.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Charles Taylor is one of the leading players in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry in last five years.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Charles Taylor needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Charles Taylor can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Charles Taylor is planning to shift buying processes online.
Charles Taylor Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Charles Taylor are -
Buying journey improvements
– Charles Taylor can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) 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.
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 Charles Taylor 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Charles Taylor 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 Charles Taylor to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Charles Taylor 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. Charles Taylor 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Charles Taylor 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Charles Taylor in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry. Now Charles Taylor can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Charles Taylor can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Developing new processes and practices
– Charles Taylor can develop new processes and procedures in Insurance (Miscellaneous) 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Charles Taylor can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Insurance (Miscellaneous) 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Charles Taylor can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Charles Taylor 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Charles Taylor 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Charles Taylor 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 (Miscellaneous) industry.
Threats Charles Taylor External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Charles Taylor are -
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 Charles Taylor.
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 Charles Taylor business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Charles Taylor in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Charles Taylor 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 (Miscellaneous) industry.
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. Charles Taylor needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Charles Taylor 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 (Miscellaneous) industry regulations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Charles Taylor 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 Charles Taylor prominent markets.
Increasing wage structure of Charles Taylor
– 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 Charles Taylor.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Charles Taylor is facing in Insurance (Miscellaneous) sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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
– Charles Taylor 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Charles Taylor may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Insurance (Miscellaneous) sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Charles Taylor Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Charles Taylor 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 Charles Taylor 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 Charles Taylor 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 Charles Taylor 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 Charles Taylor needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.