Crawford&Co (CRDa) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Crawford&Co (United States)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Crawford&Co is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing energy prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Crawford&Co

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Crawford&Co can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Crawford&Co, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Crawford&Co 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Crawford&Co can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Crawford&Co
2. Improving business portfolio management of Crawford&Co
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Insurance (Miscellaneous) sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Crawford&Co

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Strengths of Crawford&Co | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Crawford&Co are -

Strong track record of project management in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry

– Crawford&Co is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

High brand equity

– Crawford&Co has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Crawford&Co to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Diverse revenue streams

– Crawford&Co is present in almost all the verticals within the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry. This has provided Crawford&Co 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

– Crawford&Co 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 Insurance (Miscellaneous) 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 Insurance (Miscellaneous)

– Crawford&Co is one of the leading players in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Crawford&Co in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

Training and development

– Crawford&Co 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.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Crawford&Co 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.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Crawford&Co has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Crawford&Co staying ahead in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

Successful track record of launching new products

– Crawford&Co has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Crawford&Co 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.

Innovation driven organization

– Crawford&Co is one of the most innovative firm in Insurance (Miscellaneous) sector.

Learning organization

- Crawford&Co 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 Crawford&Co is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Crawford&Co emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Crawford&Co in Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

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Weaknesses of Crawford&Co | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Crawford&Co are -

Skills based hiring in Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Crawford&Co 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.

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Crawford&Co, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Insurance (Miscellaneous) 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.

Employees’ less understanding of Crawford&Co strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Crawford&Co don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry, Crawford&Co 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.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Crawford&Co 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 Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry using digital technology.

Lack of clear differentiation of Crawford&Co products

– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Crawford&Co needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.

Need for greater diversity

– Crawford&Co 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.

Ability to respond to the competition

– As the decision making is very deliberative at Crawford&Co, in the dynamic environment of Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Crawford&Co has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As Crawford&Co is one of the leading players in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry in last five years.

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of United States, Crawford&Co needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Crawford&Co is just above the Insurance (Miscellaneous) 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.

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Crawford&Co Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Crawford&Co are -

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Crawford&Co can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Crawford&Co operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Insurance (Miscellaneous) sector.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help Crawford&Co to increase its market reach. Crawford&Co 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.

Buying journey improvements

– Crawford&Co can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) 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.

Loyalty marketing

– Crawford&Co 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.

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. Crawford&Co can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Crawford&Co can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

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 Crawford&Co 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.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Crawford&Co 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.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Crawford&Co 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 Crawford&Co to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Crawford&Co 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 Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Crawford&Co 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. Crawford&Co 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.

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry

– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Crawford&Co in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry. Now Crawford&Co can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Crawford&Co has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Insurance (Miscellaneous) sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Crawford&Co to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Crawford&Co to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

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Threats Crawford&Co External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Crawford&Co are -

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Crawford&Co is facing in Insurance (Miscellaneous) sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

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. Crawford&Co 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 Crawford&Co in Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry. The Insurance (Miscellaneous) 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.

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 Crawford&Co business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Crawford&Co has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Crawford&Co needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) 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.

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.

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 Crawford&Co in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Crawford&Co 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 Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry and other sectors.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Crawford&Co 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 Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Crawford&Co may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Insurance (Miscellaneous) sector.

Environmental challenges

– Crawford&Co 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. Crawford&Co can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry.

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Crawford&Co can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

Regulatory challenges

– Crawford&Co 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 Insurance (Miscellaneous) industry regulations.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Crawford&Co Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Crawford&Co 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 Crawford&Co 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 Crawford&Co 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 Crawford&Co 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 Crawford&Co needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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