Central Federal Bancshares (CFDB) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Central Federal Bancshares (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Central Federal Bancshares is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – 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%, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, technology disruption, increasing commodity prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, geopolitical disruptions,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Central Federal Bancshares
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Central Federal Bancshares can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Central Federal Bancshares, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Central Federal Bancshares 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 Central Federal Bancshares can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Central Federal Bancshares
2. Improving business portfolio management of Central Federal Bancshares
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Central Federal Bancshares
Strengths of Central Federal Bancshares | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Central Federal Bancshares are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Central Federal Bancshares is one of the leading players in the industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Central Federal Bancshares 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Central Federal Bancshares in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Central Federal Bancshares 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 Central Federal Bancshares is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Central Federal Bancshares emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Central Federal Bancshares in the sector have low bargaining power. Central Federal Bancshares has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Central Federal Bancshares to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Central Federal Bancshares
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Central Federal Bancshares does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Diverse revenue streams
– Central Federal Bancshares is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Central Federal Bancshares 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Central Federal Bancshares has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Central Federal Bancshares 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
– Central Federal Bancshares has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Central Federal Bancshares have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Central Federal Bancshares comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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.
Training and development
– Central Federal Bancshares has one of the best training and development program in industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– Central Federal Bancshares has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Central Federal Bancshares to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Central Federal Bancshares to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Weaknesses of Central Federal Bancshares | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Central Federal Bancshares are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Central Federal Bancshares has some of the most successful models in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Central Federal Bancshares should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Central Federal Bancshares needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Central Federal Bancshares is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Central Federal Bancshares needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Central Federal Bancshares can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Central Federal Bancshares is planning to shift buying processes online.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Central Federal Bancshares 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Central Federal Bancshares products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Central Federal Bancshares needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Central Federal Bancshares 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.
High dependence on Central Federal Bancshares ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Central Federal Bancshares still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Central Federal Bancshares has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Need for greater diversity
– Central Federal Bancshares 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 Central Federal Bancshares supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Central Federal Bancshares is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Central Federal Bancshares vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Central Federal Bancshares has high operating costs in the industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Central Federal Bancshares lucrative customers.
Central Federal Bancshares Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Central Federal Bancshares are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Central Federal Bancshares 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 Central Federal Bancshares 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 Central Federal Bancshares in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Central Federal Bancshares can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the industry.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Central Federal Bancshares to increase its market reach. Central Federal Bancshares 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 Central Federal Bancshares can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Central Federal Bancshares in the industry. Now Central Federal Bancshares can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Central Federal Bancshares 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. Central Federal Bancshares 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.
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 Central Federal Bancshares 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Central Federal Bancshares can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Central Federal Bancshares 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Central Federal Bancshares has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Central Federal Bancshares has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Central Federal Bancshares to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Central Federal Bancshares to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Central Federal Bancshares has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Central Federal Bancshares to build a more holistic ecosystem for Central Federal Bancshares products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Central Federal Bancshares External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Central Federal Bancshares are -
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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Central Federal Bancshares 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 Central Federal Bancshares in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. Central Federal Bancshares 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Central Federal Bancshares in industry. The 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.
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. Central Federal Bancshares needs to understand the core reasons impacting the 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 Central Federal Bancshares business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Central Federal Bancshares needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the industry regulations.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Central Federal Bancshares has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Central Federal Bancshares needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Central Federal Bancshares 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 Central Federal Bancshares prominent markets.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Central Federal Bancshares with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Central Federal Bancshares.
Increasing wage structure of Central Federal Bancshares
– 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 Central Federal Bancshares.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Central Federal Bancshares Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Central Federal Bancshares 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 Central Federal Bancshares 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 Central Federal Bancshares 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 Central Federal Bancshares 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 Central Federal Bancshares needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.