Community Bankers (ESXB) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Community Bankers (United States)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Community Bankers is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Community Bankers

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Community Bankers can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Community Bankers, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Community Bankers 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 Community Bankers can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Community Bankers
2. Improving business portfolio management of Community Bankers
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 Community Bankers

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Strengths of Community Bankers | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Community Bankers are -

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Community Bankers in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Community Bankers has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Community Bankers to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Community Bankers in Regional Banks industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Community Bankers 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 Community Bankers have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Training and development

– Community Bankers has one of the best training and development program in Financial industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Community Bankers 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.

Organizational Resilience of Community Bankers

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Community Bankers does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Strong track record of project management in the Regional Banks industry

– Community Bankers 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 switching costs

– The high switching costs that Community Bankers 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.

Successful track record of launching new products

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

Ability to lead change in Regional Banks

– Community Bankers 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 Community Bankers in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

Learning organization

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

High brand equity

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

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Weaknesses of Community Bankers | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Community Bankers are -

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Community Bankers has high operating costs in the Regional Banks industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Community Bankers lucrative customers.

High dependence on existing supply chain

– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Community Bankers supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Community Bankers is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Community Bankers vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As Community Bankers is one of the leading players in the Regional Banks industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Regional Banks industry in last five years.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Community Bankers 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 Regional Banks industry using digital technology.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Community Bankers is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Community Bankers to provide better information regarding Regional Banks products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Employees’ less understanding of Community Bankers strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Community Bankers 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.

High dependence on Community Bankers ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Community Bankers 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 Community Bankers has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

Low market penetration in new markets

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

Skills based hiring in Regional Banks industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Community Bankers 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.

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that Community Bankers 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 Community Bankers can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Community Bankers is planning to shift buying processes online.

Ability to respond to the competition

– As the decision making is very deliberative at Community Bankers, in the dynamic environment of Regional Banks industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Community Bankers has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.

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Community Bankers Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Community Bankers are -

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 Community Bankers 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.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Community Bankers can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Community Bankers operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Regional Banks sector.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

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

Reforming the budgeting process

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

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Community Bankers is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Community Bankers 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.

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of Community Bankers has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Regional Banks industry. This can help Community Bankers to build a more holistic ecosystem for Community Bankers products in the Regional Banks industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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. Community Bankers 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. Community Bankers 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.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Community Bankers 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.

Lowering marketing communication costs

– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Community Bankers in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Regional Banks industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.

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 Community Bankers in the Regional Banks industry. Now Community Bankers can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Community Bankers 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.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Community Bankers to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Community Bankers to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

Loyalty marketing

– Community Bankers 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.

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Threats Community Bankers External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Community Bankers are -

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 Community Bankers business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Community Bankers 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.

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Regional Banks industry are lowering. It can presents Community Bankers with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Regional Banks sector.

Regulatory challenges

– Community Bankers 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.

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 Community Bankers in the Regional Banks sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Increasing wage structure of Community Bankers

– 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 Community Bankers.

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. Community Bankers needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Regional Banks industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Community Bankers has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Regional Banks industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Community Bankers 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.

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.

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 Community Bankers.

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. Community Bankers 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.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Community Bankers 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.

Easy access to finance

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

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Community Bankers Template, Example

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

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