RM Secured Direct Lending (RMDL) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Misc. Financial Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for RM Secured Direct Lending (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , RM Secured Direct Lending is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is backlash against globalization, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, technology disruption, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of RM Secured Direct Lending
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that RM Secured Direct Lending can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the RM Secured Direct Lending, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of RM Secured Direct Lending
2. Improving business portfolio management of RM Secured Direct Lending
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 RM Secured Direct Lending
Strengths of RM Secured Direct Lending | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of RM Secured Direct Lending are -
Strong track record of project management in the Misc. Financial Services industry
– RM Secured Direct Lending is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Diverse revenue streams
– RM Secured Direct Lending is present in almost all the verticals within the Misc. Financial Services industry. This has provided RM Secured Direct Lending 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 lead change in Misc. Financial Services
– RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Ability to recruit top talent
– RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Misc. Financial Services industry
– RM Secured Direct Lending has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled RM Secured Direct Lending to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Misc. Financial Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped RM Secured Direct Lending to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of RM Secured Direct Lending in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. RM Secured Direct Lending has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps RM Secured Direct Lending to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
High brand equity
– RM Secured Direct Lending has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled RM Secured Direct Lending to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Successful track record of launching new products
– RM Secured Direct Lending has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. RM Secured Direct Lending 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
- RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at RM Secured Direct Lending emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of RM Secured Direct Lending in Misc. Financial Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of RM Secured Direct Lending | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of RM Secured Direct Lending are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though RM Secured Direct Lending has some of the most successful models in the Misc. Financial Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. RM Secured Direct Lending should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, RM Secured Direct Lending 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, RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as RM Secured Direct Lending is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Misc. Financial Services industry, RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, RM Secured Direct Lending needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending lucrative customers.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of RM Secured Direct Lending is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Misc. Financial Services industry, but RM Secured Direct Lending needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help RM Secured Direct Lending to focus more on services in the Misc. Financial Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High dependence on RM Secured Direct Lending ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of RM Secured Direct Lending still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Misc. Financial Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though RM Secured Direct Lending has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
RM Secured Direct Lending Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of RM Secured Direct Lending are -
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, RM Secured Direct Lending is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of RM Secured Direct Lending has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Misc. Financial Services industry. This can help RM Secured Direct Lending to build a more holistic ecosystem for RM Secured Direct Lending products in the Misc. Financial Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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. RM Secured Direct Lending can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending 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 Misc. Financial Services industry.
Loyalty marketing
– RM Secured Direct Lending 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
– RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
Manufacturing automation
– RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help RM Secured Direct Lending to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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. RM Secured Direct Lending can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Threats RM Secured Direct Lending External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of RM Secured Direct Lending are -
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 RM Secured Direct Lending business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 RM Secured Direct Lending.
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 RM Secured Direct Lending in the Misc. Financial Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
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. RM Secured Direct Lending can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that RM Secured Direct Lending is facing in Misc. Financial Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Misc. Financial Services industry are lowering. It can presents RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
Environmental challenges
– RM Secured Direct Lending 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. RM Secured Direct Lending can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Misc. Financial Services industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, RM Secured Direct Lending may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Misc. Financial Services sector.
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. RM Secured Direct Lending needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Misc. Financial Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for RM Secured Direct Lending 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of RM Secured Direct Lending Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending 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 RM Secured Direct Lending needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.