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 – there is backlash against globalization, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing energy prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, geopolitical disruptions,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , 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 -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Gladstone Commercial D Pref comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Gladstone Commercial D Pref has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Innovation driven organization
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Ability to lead change in
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref is one of the leading players in the industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Gladstone Commercial D Pref in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Gladstone Commercial D Pref have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
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 -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Gladstone Commercial D Pref has some of the most successful models in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Gladstone Commercial D Pref should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Gladstone Commercial D Pref has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Gladstone Commercial D Pref needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Gladstone Commercial D Pref needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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.
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.
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.
Employees’ less understanding of Gladstone Commercial D Pref strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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.
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.
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.
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 -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Gladstone Commercial D Pref to increase its market reach. Gladstone Commercial D Pref will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Gladstone Commercial D Pref in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Gladstone Commercial D Pref has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Gladstone Commercial D Pref to build a more holistic ecosystem for Gladstone Commercial D Pref products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
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.
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.
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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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 industry.
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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Gladstone Commercial D Pref is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Gladstone Commercial D Pref can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
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.
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.
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.
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 -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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 industry and other sectors.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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 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 Gladstone Commercial D Pref in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Gladstone Commercial D Pref has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Gladstone Commercial D Pref needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the 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.
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. Gladstone Commercial D Pref 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.
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 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.
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.