Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund (GAB) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Misc. Financial Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing energy prices, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing transportation and logistics costs, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund
2. Improving business portfolio management of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund
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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund
Strengths of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Misc. Financial Services industry
– Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund is one of the most innovative firm in Misc. Financial Services sector.
Learning organization
- Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Organizational Resilience of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Ability to lead change in Misc. Financial Services
– Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund are -
Employees’ less understanding of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Misc. Financial Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Misc. Financial Services industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Misc. Financial Services industry using digital technology.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Misc. Financial Services industry, but Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund to focus more on services in the Misc. Financial Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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
– Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund has some of the most successful models in the Misc. Financial Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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. Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund, 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.
Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund are -
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Misc. Financial Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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. Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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
– Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Misc. Financial Services sector.
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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund in the Misc. Financial Services industry. Now Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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. Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Threats Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund is facing in Misc. Financial Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund prominent markets.
Increasing wage structure of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund
– 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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund.
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. Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Misc. Financial Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund in the Misc. Financial Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Misc. Financial Services industry are lowering. It can presents Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Misc. Financial Services sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Misc. Financial Services industry and other sectors.
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. Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Misc. Financial Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund 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 Gabelli Equity Trust Closed Fund needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
