Griffin (GFM) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Griffin (United Kingdom)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Griffin is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, technology disruption, there is backlash against globalization, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Griffin

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Griffin can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Griffin, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Griffin 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Griffin can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Griffin
2. Improving business portfolio management of Griffin
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Gold & Silver sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Griffin

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

The strengths of Griffin are -

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Griffin 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.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Griffin in Gold & Silver industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

Training and development

– Griffin has one of the best training and development program in Basic Materials 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.

High brand equity

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

Diverse revenue streams

– Griffin is present in almost all the verticals within the Gold & Silver industry. This has provided Griffin 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.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Griffin has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Gold & Silver industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Griffin have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

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

Analytics focus

– Griffin 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 Gold & Silver 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.

Innovation driven organization

– Griffin is one of the most innovative firm in Gold & Silver sector.

Organizational Resilience of Griffin

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

Strong track record of project management in the Gold & Silver industry

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

Learning organization

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

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

The weaknesses of Griffin are -

Employees’ less understanding of Griffin strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Griffin 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.

High bargaining power of channel partners in Gold & Silver industry

– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Griffin 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 Gold & Silver industry.

Products dominated business model

– Even though Griffin has some of the most successful models in the Gold & Silver industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Griffin should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.

Aligning sales with marketing

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

Interest costs

– Compare to the competition, Griffin 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.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Gold & Silver industry, Griffin 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.

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 Griffin supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Griffin is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Griffin vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Griffin has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Gold & Silver industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Griffin is just above the Gold & Silver 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 strategic competitive environment developments

– As Griffin is one of the leading players in the Gold & Silver industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Gold & Silver industry in last five years.

High dependence on Griffin ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Griffin still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Gold & Silver industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Griffin has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

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

The opportunities of Griffin are -

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Gold & Silver industry

– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Griffin in the Gold & Silver industry. Now Griffin can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

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

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Griffin 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 Gold & Silver industry.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help Griffin to increase its market reach. Griffin will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Griffin 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Griffin has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Gold & Silver sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Griffin to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Griffin to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Griffin 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.

Loyalty marketing

– Griffin 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.

Finding new ways to collaborate

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

Low interest rates

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

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Gold & Silver industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Griffin 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. Griffin 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.

Buying journey improvements

– Griffin can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Gold & Silver 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.

Creating value in data economy

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

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

The threats of Griffin 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.

Increasing wage structure of Griffin

– 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 Griffin.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Griffin is facing in Gold & Silver sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

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. Griffin 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.

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 Griffin.

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

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Gold & Silver industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Griffin can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Griffin may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Gold & Silver sector.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Griffin 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.

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 Griffin in the Gold & Silver sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Griffin 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 Gold & Silver industry.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Griffin has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Gold & Silver industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Griffin needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Gold & Silver 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.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Griffin in Gold & Silver industry. The Gold & Silver 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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Griffin Template, Example

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

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