Gladstone Commercial D Pref (GOODM) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Gladstone Commercial D Pref (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Gladstone Commercial D Pref is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
increasing energy prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Gladstone Commercial D Pref
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Gladstone Commercial D Pref can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Gladstone Commercial D Pref, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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 Gladstone Commercial D Pref can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Gladstone Commercial D Pref
2. Improving business portfolio management of Gladstone Commercial D Pref
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Gladstone Commercial D Pref
Strengths of Gladstone Commercial D Pref | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Gladstone Commercial D Pref are -
High brand equity
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Gladstone Commercial D Pref to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Gladstone Commercial D Pref in the sector have low bargaining power. Gladstone Commercial D Pref has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Gladstone Commercial D Pref to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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.
Organizational Resilience of Gladstone Commercial D Pref
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Gladstone Commercial D Pref does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Gladstone Commercial D Pref digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Gladstone Commercial D Pref to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Gladstone Commercial D Pref to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Gladstone Commercial D Pref in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref has one of the best training and development program in industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Innovation driven organization
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Learning organization
- Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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 Gladstone Commercial D Pref is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Gladstone Commercial D Pref emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Gladstone Commercial D Pref staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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 Gladstone Commercial D Pref | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Gladstone Commercial D Pref are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Gladstone Commercial D Pref needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Gladstone Commercial D Pref can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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, Gladstone Commercial D Pref is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Gladstone Commercial D Pref to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Gladstone Commercial D Pref, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Gladstone Commercial D Pref has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Gladstone Commercial D Pref has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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.
High dependence on Gladstone Commercial D Pref ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Gladstone Commercial D Pref still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Gladstone Commercial D Pref has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Lack of clear differentiation of Gladstone Commercial D Pref products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Gladstone Commercial D Pref needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Gladstone Commercial D Pref is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but Gladstone Commercial D Pref needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Gladstone Commercial D Pref to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Need for greater diversity
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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 industry using digital technology.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Gladstone Commercial D Pref has high operating costs in the industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Gladstone Commercial D Pref lucrative customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Gladstone Commercial D Pref is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Gladstone Commercial D Pref Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Gladstone Commercial D Pref are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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 Gladstone Commercial D Pref to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Loyalty marketing
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Gladstone Commercial D Pref can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Gladstone Commercial D Pref to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Gladstone Commercial D Pref to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Gladstone Commercial D Pref can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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. Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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.
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. Gladstone Commercial D Pref can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Gladstone Commercial D Pref in the industry. Now Gladstone Commercial D Pref can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Buying journey improvements
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Gladstone Commercial D Pref can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Gladstone Commercial D Pref operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Threats Gladstone Commercial D Pref External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Gladstone Commercial D Pref are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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 Gladstone Commercial D Pref prominent markets.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Gladstone Commercial D Pref can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Gladstone Commercial D Pref is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Gladstone Commercial D Pref with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Gladstone Commercial D Pref.
Increasing wage structure of Gladstone Commercial D Pref
– 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 Gladstone Commercial D Pref.
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 Gladstone Commercial D Pref business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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. Gladstone Commercial D Pref can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
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. Gladstone Commercial D Pref needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Gladstone Commercial D Pref may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Gladstone Commercial D Pref Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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 Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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 Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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 Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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 Gladstone Commercial D Pref needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.