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Aberdeen Standard (ASLI) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Aberdeen Standard (United Kingdom)


Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Aberdeen Standard is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, technology disruption, increasing transportation and logistics costs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is backlash against globalization, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing commodity prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc



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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Aberdeen Standard


SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Aberdeen Standard can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Aberdeen Standard, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Aberdeen Standard 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 Aberdeen Standard can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Aberdeen Standard
2. Improving business portfolio management of Aberdeen Standard
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Aberdeen Standard




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

The strengths of Aberdeen Standard are -

Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry

– Aberdeen Standard has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Aberdeen Standard to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Aberdeen Standard to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.

Innovation driven organization

– Aberdeen Standard is one of the most innovative firm in sector.

Diverse revenue streams

– Aberdeen Standard is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Aberdeen Standard 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.

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Aberdeen Standard 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.

Successful track record of launching new products

– Aberdeen Standard has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Aberdeen Standard 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.

Training and development

– Aberdeen Standard has one of the best training and development program in 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.

Highly skilled collaborators

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

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

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

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Aberdeen Standard in the sector have low bargaining power. Aberdeen Standard has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Aberdeen Standard to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Learning organization

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

Ability to lead change in

– Aberdeen Standard is one of the leading players in the industry in United Kingdom. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in United Kingdom but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Aberdeen Standard 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

– Aberdeen Standard is one of the leading players in the 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.






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

The weaknesses of Aberdeen Standard are -

Ability to respond to the competition

– As the decision making is very deliberative at Aberdeen Standard, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Aberdeen Standard has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.

Aligning sales with marketing

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

Skills based hiring in industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Aberdeen Standard 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.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

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

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, Aberdeen Standard needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

High bargaining power of channel partners in industry

– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Aberdeen Standard 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 industry.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Aberdeen Standard has high operating costs in the industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Aberdeen Standard lucrative customers.

Products dominated business model

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

Need for greater diversity

– Aberdeen Standard 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.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Aberdeen Standard 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.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

– The organizational structure of Aberdeen Standard is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but Aberdeen Standard needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Aberdeen Standard to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.




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


The opportunities of Aberdeen Standard are -

Buying journey improvements

– Aberdeen Standard can improve the customer journey of consumers in the 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, Aberdeen Standard 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.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Aberdeen Standard in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in industry

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

Developing new processes and practices

– Aberdeen Standard can develop new processes and procedures in 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.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Aberdeen Standard can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Aberdeen Standard operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Aberdeen Standard 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.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Aberdeen Standard can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Aberdeen Standard 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 industry.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

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

Loyalty marketing

– Aberdeen Standard 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

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

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 Aberdeen Standard 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.




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


The threats of Aberdeen Standard are -

Regulatory challenges

– Aberdeen Standard 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 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 Aberdeen Standard in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

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.

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

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. Aberdeen Standard needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Aberdeen Standard 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, Aberdeen Standard may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of sector.

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. Aberdeen Standard 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.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Aberdeen Standard 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 Aberdeen Standard prominent markets.

Easy access to finance

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

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Aberdeen Standard 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 industry.

Increasing wage structure of Aberdeen Standard

– 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 Aberdeen Standard.




Weighted SWOT Analysis of Aberdeen Standard Template, Example


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



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