SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Beneficial Mutual (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Beneficial Mutual is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – geopolitical disruptions, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, there is backlash against globalization, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
increasing commodity prices, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Beneficial Mutual
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Beneficial Mutual can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Beneficial Mutual, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Beneficial Mutual 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 Beneficial Mutual can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Beneficial Mutual
2. Improving business portfolio management of Beneficial Mutual
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Regional Banks sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Beneficial Mutual
Strengths of Beneficial Mutual | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Beneficial Mutual are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Beneficial Mutual comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Regional Banks 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Beneficial Mutual has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Regional Banks industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Beneficial Mutual have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Beneficial Mutual in Regional Banks industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to lead change in Regional Banks
– Beneficial Mutual is one of the leading players in the Regional Banks industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Regional Banks industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Beneficial Mutual in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Learning organization
- Beneficial Mutual 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 Beneficial Mutual is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Beneficial Mutual emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Regional Banks industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Beneficial Mutual digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Beneficial Mutual 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Beneficial Mutual is present in almost all the verticals within the Regional Banks industry. This has provided Beneficial Mutual 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.
Organizational Resilience of Beneficial Mutual
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Beneficial Mutual does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Beneficial Mutual 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 Beneficial Mutual 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.
Analytics focus
– Beneficial Mutual 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 Regional Banks industry. The technology infrastructure of United States 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Beneficial Mutual has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Beneficial Mutual 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.
Weaknesses of Beneficial Mutual | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Beneficial Mutual are -
High dependence on Beneficial Mutual ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Beneficial Mutual still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Regional Banks industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Beneficial Mutual has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Need for greater diversity
– Beneficial Mutual 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.
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 Beneficial Mutual supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Beneficial Mutual is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Beneficial Mutual vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Regional Banks industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Beneficial Mutual 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 Regional Banks industry.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Beneficial Mutual, in the dynamic environment of Regional Banks industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Beneficial Mutual has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Beneficial Mutual, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Regional Banks 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Beneficial Mutual 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Beneficial Mutual is just above the Regional Banks 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Beneficial Mutual products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Beneficial Mutual needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Regional Banks industry, Beneficial Mutual 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Beneficial Mutual needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Regional Banks industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Beneficial Mutual can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Beneficial Mutual is planning to shift buying processes online.
Beneficial Mutual Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Beneficial Mutual are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Beneficial Mutual 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Beneficial Mutual can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Beneficial Mutual operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Regional Banks sector.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Regional Banks industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Beneficial Mutual in the Regional Banks industry. Now Beneficial Mutual can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Regional Banks industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Beneficial Mutual can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Beneficial Mutual 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Beneficial Mutual 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Beneficial Mutual is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Beneficial Mutual can utilize new technology in the field of Regional Banks 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 Regional Banks industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Beneficial Mutual 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. Beneficial Mutual 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Beneficial Mutual to increase its market reach. Beneficial Mutual will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Beneficial Mutual can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Beneficial Mutual 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 Beneficial Mutual to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Beneficial Mutual 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Beneficial Mutual can develop new processes and procedures in Regional Banks 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 Beneficial Mutual External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Beneficial Mutual are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Beneficial Mutual has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Regional Banks industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Beneficial Mutual needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Regional Banks 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.
Environmental challenges
– Beneficial Mutual 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. Beneficial Mutual can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Regional Banks industry.
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 Beneficial Mutual in the Regional Banks sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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 Beneficial Mutual.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Beneficial Mutual may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Regional Banks sector.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Beneficial Mutual in Regional Banks industry. The Regional Banks 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Regional Banks industry are lowering. It can presents Beneficial Mutual with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Regional Banks sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Beneficial Mutual 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 Regional Banks industry and other sectors.
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. Beneficial Mutual needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Regional Banks industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Beneficial Mutual 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 Regional Banks industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Beneficial Mutual 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
– Beneficial Mutual 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 Regional Banks industry regulations.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Beneficial Mutual 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 Beneficial Mutual prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Beneficial Mutual Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Beneficial Mutual 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 Beneficial Mutual 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 Beneficial Mutual 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 Beneficial Mutual 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 Beneficial Mutual needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
