Great Elm Capital (GECC) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Misc. Financial Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Great Elm Capital (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Great Elm Capital is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing energy prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing commodity prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Great Elm Capital
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Great Elm Capital can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Great Elm Capital, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Great Elm Capital 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 Great Elm Capital can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Great Elm Capital
2. Improving business portfolio management of Great Elm Capital
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 Great Elm Capital
Strengths of Great Elm Capital | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Great Elm Capital are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Great Elm Capital is present in almost all the verticals within the Misc. Financial Services industry. This has provided Great Elm Capital 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Great Elm Capital 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.
Learning organization
- Great Elm Capital 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 Great Elm Capital is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Great Elm Capital emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Misc. Financial Services industry
– Great Elm Capital is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Analytics focus
– Great Elm Capital is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services industry. The technology infrastructure of United States is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Great Elm Capital 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.
High brand equity
– Great Elm Capital has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Great Elm Capital to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Great Elm Capital 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 Great Elm Capital have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Digital Transformation in Misc. Financial Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Great Elm Capital digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Great Elm Capital has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Training and development
– Great Elm Capital 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Great Elm Capital is one of the most innovative firm in Misc. Financial Services sector.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Great Elm Capital 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.
Weaknesses of Great Elm Capital | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Great Elm Capital are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Great Elm Capital 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. Great Elm Capital should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Great Elm Capital has high operating costs in the Misc. Financial Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Great Elm Capital lucrative customers.
High dependence on Great Elm Capital ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Great Elm Capital still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Misc. Financial Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Great Elm Capital has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Great Elm Capital is just above the Misc. Financial Services industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Lack of clear differentiation of Great Elm Capital products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Great Elm Capital needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Great Elm Capital has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Misc. Financial Services industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Employees’ less understanding of Great Elm Capital strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Great Elm Capital 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Great Elm Capital 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 Great Elm Capital can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Great Elm Capital is planning to shift buying processes online.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Great Elm Capital 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Misc. Financial Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Great Elm Capital 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Great Elm Capital is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Misc. Financial Services industry, but Great Elm Capital needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Great Elm Capital to focus more on services in the Misc. Financial Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Great Elm Capital Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Great Elm Capital 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, Great Elm Capital can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Great Elm Capital operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Misc. Financial Services sector.
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. Great Elm Capital can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Manufacturing automation
– Great Elm Capital 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Great Elm Capital has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Misc. Financial Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Great Elm Capital to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Great Elm Capital to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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. Great Elm Capital can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Great Elm Capital has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Misc. Financial Services industry. This can help Great Elm Capital to build a more holistic ecosystem for Great Elm Capital products in the Misc. Financial Services 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 Misc. Financial Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Great Elm Capital 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. Great Elm Capital 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Great Elm Capital 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Great Elm Capital 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Great Elm Capital 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.
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 Great Elm Capital in the Misc. Financial Services industry. Now Great Elm Capital can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Great Elm Capital can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Great Elm Capital 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 Great Elm Capital to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Great Elm Capital External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Great Elm Capital are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Great Elm Capital 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Great Elm Capital has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Misc. Financial Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Great Elm Capital needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Misc. Financial Services sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
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 Great Elm Capital.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Great Elm Capital 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Great Elm Capital needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Misc. Financial Services industry regulations.
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 Great Elm Capital business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Great Elm Capital can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Environmental challenges
– Great Elm Capital 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. Great Elm Capital can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Misc. Financial Services industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Misc. Financial Services industry are lowering. It can presents Great Elm Capital 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.
Increasing wage structure of Great Elm Capital
– 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 Great Elm Capital.
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 Great Elm Capital in the Misc. Financial Services sector and impact the bottomline 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Great Elm Capital may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Misc. Financial Services sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Great Elm Capital Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Great Elm Capital 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 Great Elm Capital 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 Great Elm Capital 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 Great Elm Capital 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 Great Elm Capital needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.