John Hancock Finan Opportunities (BTO) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Misc. Financial Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for John Hancock Finan Opportunities (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , John Hancock Finan Opportunities is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – geopolitical disruptions, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, wage bills are increasing, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of John Hancock Finan Opportunities
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that John Hancock Finan Opportunities can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the John Hancock Finan Opportunities, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of John Hancock Finan Opportunities
2. Improving business portfolio management of John Hancock Finan Opportunities
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Misc. Financial Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of John Hancock Finan Opportunities
Strengths of John Hancock Finan Opportunities | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of John Hancock Finan Opportunities are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities is present in almost all the verticals within the Misc. Financial Services industry. This has provided John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in Misc. Financial Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For John Hancock Finan Opportunities digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
High brand equity
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled John Hancock Finan Opportunities to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at John Hancock Finan Opportunities emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Analytics focus
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 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.
Ability to lead change in Misc. Financial Services
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities is one of the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Misc. Financial Services industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled John Hancock Finan Opportunities in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses of John Hancock Finan Opportunities | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of John Hancock Finan Opportunities are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of John Hancock Finan Opportunities, 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, John Hancock Finan Opportunities is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help John Hancock Finan Opportunities to provide better information regarding Misc. Financial Services products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Need for greater diversity
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of John Hancock Finan Opportunities products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, John Hancock Finan Opportunities needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, John Hancock Finan Opportunities needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of John Hancock Finan Opportunities is just above the Misc. Financial Services 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Misc. Financial Services industry, John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as John Hancock Finan Opportunities is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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. John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
John Hancock Finan Opportunities Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of John Hancock Finan Opportunities are -
Buying journey improvements
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Misc. Financial 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, John Hancock Finan Opportunities is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of John Hancock Finan Opportunities has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Misc. Financial Services industry. This can help John Hancock Finan Opportunities to build a more holistic ecosystem for John Hancock Finan Opportunities products in the Misc. Financial Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Manufacturing automation
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Misc. Financial Services sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 Misc. Financial Services industry.
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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities in the Misc. Financial Services industry. Now John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 Misc. Financial Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. John Hancock Finan Opportunities can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Threats John Hancock Finan Opportunities External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of John Hancock Finan Opportunities are -
Regulatory challenges
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for John Hancock Finan Opportunities in Misc. Financial Services industry. The Misc. Financial Services 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.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Misc. Financial Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that John Hancock Finan Opportunities is facing in Misc. Financial Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
Environmental challenges
– John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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. John Hancock Finan Opportunities can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Misc. Financial Services industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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.
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. John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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, John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities prominent markets.
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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities in the Misc. Financial Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of John Hancock Finan Opportunities Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities 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 John Hancock Finan Opportunities needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.