Bahema (BAHI3) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Misc. Financial Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Bahema (Brazil)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Bahema is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, wage bills are increasing, geopolitical disruptions, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing energy prices, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Bahema can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Bahema, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Bahema 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 Bahema can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Bahema
2. Improving business portfolio management of Bahema
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Brazil
4. Making a Misc. Financial Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Bahema
Strengths of Bahema | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Bahema are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Bahema has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Bahema staying ahead in the Misc. Financial Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Bahema has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Misc. Financial Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Bahema have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Misc. Financial Services industry
– Bahema has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Bahema to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Misc. Financial Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Bahema to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Misc. Financial Services
– Bahema is one of the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services industry in Brazil. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Misc. Financial Services industry in Brazil but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Bahema in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Diverse revenue streams
– Bahema is present in almost all the verticals within the Misc. Financial Services industry. This has provided Bahema 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.
Analytics focus
– Bahema 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 Misc. Financial Services industry. The technology infrastructure of Brazil 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.
Learning organization
- Bahema 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 Bahema is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Bahema emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Bahema
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Bahema does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Bahema in Misc. Financial Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Bahema 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.
Training and development
– Bahema has one of the best training and development program in Financial 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Bahema 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.
Weaknesses of Bahema | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Bahema are -
High bargaining power of channel partners in Misc. Financial Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Brazil, Bahema 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 Misc. Financial Services industry.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Bahema, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Misc. Financial Services industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Bahema 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 Bahema lucrative customers.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Bahema supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Bahema is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Bahema vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Bahema 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.
Skills based hiring in Misc. Financial Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Bahema 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 Bahema is one of the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Misc. Financial Services industry in last five years.
Lack of clear differentiation of Bahema products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Bahema needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Bahema has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Misc. Financial Services industry over the last five years. Bahema even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Brazil, Bahema needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Bahema 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 Bahema can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Bahema is planning to shift buying processes online.
Bahema Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Bahema are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Bahema 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 Bahema to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Bahema in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Misc. Financial Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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. Bahema can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Bahema is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Bahema 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Bahema 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 Bahema can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Bahema 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 Bahema to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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 Bahema 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Bahema 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Bahema 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 Bahema to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Bahema to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Bahema 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Misc. Financial Services industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Bahema in the Misc. Financial Services industry. Now Bahema can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Developing new processes and practices
– Bahema can develop new processes and procedures in Misc. Financial Services 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.
Threats Bahema External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Bahema are -
Increasing wage structure of Bahema
– 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 Bahema.
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. Bahema 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Bahema 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Bahema 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 Misc. Financial Services industry regulations.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Bahema has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Misc. Financial Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Bahema needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Misc. Financial Services 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.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Bahema 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.
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. Bahema needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Misc. Financial Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Bahema 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 Bahema.
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. Bahema can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Bahema 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Bahema 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 Bahema prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Bahema Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Bahema 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 Bahema 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 Bahema 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 Bahema 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 Bahema needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.