SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Walker Greenbank (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Walker Greenbank is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
wage bills are increasing, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Walker Greenbank can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Walker Greenbank, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Walker Greenbank 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 Walker Greenbank can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Walker Greenbank
2. Improving business portfolio management of Walker Greenbank
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Personal & Household Prods. sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Walker Greenbank
Strengths of Walker Greenbank | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Walker Greenbank are -
Analytics focus
– Walker Greenbank 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 Personal & Household Prods. 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Walker Greenbank is one of the leading players in the Personal & Household Prods. 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Walker Greenbank has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Walker Greenbank 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.
Ability to lead change in Personal & Household Prods.
– Walker Greenbank is one of the leading players in the Personal & Household Prods. industry in United Kingdom. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Personal & Household Prods. industry in United Kingdom but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Walker Greenbank in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Walker Greenbank has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Personal & Household Prods. industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Walker Greenbank have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Diverse revenue streams
– Walker Greenbank is present in almost all the verticals within the Personal & Household Prods. industry. This has provided Walker Greenbank 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Personal & Household Prods. industry
– Walker Greenbank is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Innovation driven organization
– Walker Greenbank is one of the most innovative firm in Personal & Household Prods. sector.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Walker Greenbank 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 switching costs
– The high switching costs that Walker Greenbank 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Walker Greenbank has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Walker Greenbank staying ahead in the Personal & Household Prods. industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Organizational Resilience of Walker Greenbank
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Walker Greenbank does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Weaknesses of Walker Greenbank | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Walker Greenbank are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Walker Greenbank has some of the most successful models in the Personal & Household Prods. industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Walker Greenbank should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High dependence on Walker Greenbank ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Walker Greenbank still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Personal & Household Prods. industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Walker Greenbank has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Walker Greenbank is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Walker Greenbank to provide better information regarding Personal & Household Prods. products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Personal & Household Prods. industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Walker Greenbank 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry.
Need for greater diversity
– Walker Greenbank 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Walker Greenbank is just above the Personal & Household Prods. 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Walker Greenbank is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Personal & Household Prods. industry, but Walker Greenbank needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Walker Greenbank to focus more on services in the Personal & Household Prods. industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Walker Greenbank 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry using digital technology.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Walker Greenbank has high operating costs in the Personal & Household Prods. industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Walker Greenbank lucrative customers.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Walker Greenbank 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Walker Greenbank needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Personal & Household Prods. industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Walker Greenbank can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Walker Greenbank is planning to shift buying processes online.
Walker Greenbank Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Walker Greenbank are -
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Personal & Household Prods. industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Walker Greenbank in the Personal & Household Prods. industry. Now Walker Greenbank can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Loyalty marketing
– Walker Greenbank 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Walker Greenbank 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 Walker Greenbank to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Walker Greenbank 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Walker Greenbank in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Personal & Household Prods. industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Buying journey improvements
– Walker Greenbank can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Personal & Household Prods. 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, Walker Greenbank 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 Walker Greenbank 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Walker Greenbank can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Walker Greenbank can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 Walker Greenbank 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Walker Greenbank is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Walker Greenbank can utilize new technology in the field of Personal & Household Prods. industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Walker Greenbank has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Personal & Household Prods. sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Walker Greenbank to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Walker Greenbank to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Walker Greenbank has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Personal & Household Prods. industry. This can help Walker Greenbank to build a more holistic ecosystem for Walker Greenbank products in the Personal & Household Prods. industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Walker Greenbank External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Walker Greenbank are -
Increasing wage structure of Walker Greenbank
– 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 Walker Greenbank.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Walker Greenbank 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Walker Greenbank is facing in Personal & Household Prods. sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Walker Greenbank business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Walker Greenbank 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 Personal & Household Prods. industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Walker Greenbank in Personal & Household Prods. industry. The Personal & Household Prods. 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Walker Greenbank may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Personal & Household Prods. sector.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Personal & Household Prods. industry are lowering. It can presents Walker Greenbank with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Personal & Household Prods. sector.
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Personal & Household Prods. industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Walker Greenbank can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Walker Greenbank in the Personal & Household Prods. sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Walker Greenbank demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in Personal & Household Prods. industry and other sectors.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Walker Greenbank has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Personal & Household Prods. industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Walker Greenbank needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Personal & Household Prods. 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 Walker Greenbank Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Walker Greenbank 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 Walker Greenbank 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 Walker Greenbank 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 Walker Greenbank 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 Walker Greenbank needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.