SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Pinnacle Investment (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Pinnacle Investment is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – technology disruption, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Pinnacle Investment
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Pinnacle Investment can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Pinnacle Investment, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Pinnacle Investment 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 Pinnacle Investment can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Pinnacle Investment
2. Improving business portfolio management of Pinnacle Investment
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Investment Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Pinnacle Investment
Strengths of Pinnacle Investment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Pinnacle Investment are -
Ability to lead change in Investment Services
– Pinnacle Investment is one of the leading players in the Investment Services industry in Australia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Investment Services industry in Australia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Pinnacle Investment in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- Pinnacle Investment 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 Pinnacle Investment is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Pinnacle Investment emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Pinnacle Investment 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.
Organizational Resilience of Pinnacle Investment
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Pinnacle Investment does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Pinnacle Investment comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Investment 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.
Analytics focus
– Pinnacle Investment 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 Investment Services industry. The technology infrastructure of Australia 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.
Digital Transformation in Investment Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Pinnacle Investment digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Pinnacle Investment has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Pinnacle Investment 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
– Pinnacle Investment has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Pinnacle Investment 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Pinnacle Investment has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Investment Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Pinnacle Investment have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Pinnacle Investment is one of the most innovative firm in Investment Services sector.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Pinnacle Investment has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Pinnacle Investment staying ahead in the Investment Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Pinnacle Investment | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Pinnacle Investment are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Pinnacle Investment products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Pinnacle Investment needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on Pinnacle Investment ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Pinnacle Investment still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Investment Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Pinnacle Investment 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, Pinnacle Investment is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Pinnacle Investment to provide better information regarding Investment Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Pinnacle Investment has high operating costs in the Investment Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Pinnacle Investment lucrative customers.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Pinnacle Investment needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Investment Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Pinnacle Investment can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Pinnacle Investment is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Pinnacle Investment is one of the leading players in the Investment Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Investment Services industry in last five years.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Investment Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Australia, Pinnacle Investment 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 Investment Services industry.
Need for greater diversity
– Pinnacle Investment 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 Investment Services industry, Pinnacle Investment 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Pinnacle Investment has some of the most successful models in the Investment Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Pinnacle Investment should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Pinnacle Investment, in the dynamic environment of Investment Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Pinnacle Investment has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Pinnacle Investment Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Pinnacle Investment are -
Loyalty marketing
– Pinnacle Investment 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Pinnacle Investment 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 Pinnacle Investment to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Pinnacle Investment 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 Investment Services industry.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Pinnacle Investment 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Pinnacle Investment is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Pinnacle Investment can utilize new technology in the field of Investment Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Investment Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Pinnacle Investment 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. Pinnacle Investment 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Investment Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Pinnacle Investment can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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 Pinnacle Investment 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Pinnacle Investment has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Investment Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Pinnacle Investment to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Pinnacle Investment to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Pinnacle Investment can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Pinnacle Investment can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Investment 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Pinnacle Investment 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 Pinnacle Investment to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Investment Services industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Pinnacle Investment in the Investment Services industry. Now Pinnacle Investment can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Pinnacle Investment External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Pinnacle Investment 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 Pinnacle Investment.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Pinnacle Investment 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 Investment Services industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Pinnacle Investment 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 Investment Services industry and other sectors.
Environmental challenges
– Pinnacle Investment 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. Pinnacle Investment can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Investment Services industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Investment Services industry are lowering. It can presents Pinnacle Investment with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Investment Services 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. Pinnacle Investment 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Investment Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Pinnacle Investment 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 Pinnacle Investment in the Investment Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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
– Pinnacle Investment 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Pinnacle Investment 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 Investment Services industry regulations.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Pinnacle Investment may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Investment Services 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Pinnacle Investment Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Pinnacle Investment 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 Pinnacle Investment 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 Pinnacle Investment 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 Pinnacle Investment 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 Pinnacle Investment needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
