Great Southern Bancorp (GSBC) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Regional Banks
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Great Southern Bancorp (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Great Southern Bancorp is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, increasing commodity prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing energy prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Great Southern Bancorp
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Great Southern Bancorp can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Great Southern Bancorp, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Great Southern Bancorp 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 Southern Bancorp can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Great Southern Bancorp
2. Improving business portfolio management of Great Southern Bancorp
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Regional Banks sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Great Southern Bancorp
Strengths of Great Southern Bancorp | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Great Southern Bancorp are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Great Southern Bancorp 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Great Southern Bancorp has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Great Southern Bancorp 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
– Great Southern Bancorp is one of the most innovative firm in Regional Banks sector.
High brand equity
– Great Southern Bancorp has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Great Southern Bancorp to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Analytics focus
– Great Southern Bancorp 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 Regional Banks 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Great Southern Bancorp in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Great Southern Bancorp has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Great Southern Bancorp to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Great Southern Bancorp
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Great Southern Bancorp does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to lead change in Regional Banks
– Great Southern Bancorp is one of the leading players in the Regional Banks industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Regional Banks industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Great Southern Bancorp in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Regional Banks industry
– Great Southern Bancorp has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Great Southern Bancorp to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Regional Banks industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Great Southern Bancorp to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Great Southern Bancorp has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Great Southern Bancorp staying ahead in the Regional Banks 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 Great Southern Bancorp in Regional Banks industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Great Southern Bancorp has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Regional Banks industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Great Southern Bancorp have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Great Southern Bancorp | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Great Southern Bancorp are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Great Southern Bancorp needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Regional Banks industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Great Southern Bancorp can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Great Southern Bancorp is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring in Regional Banks industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Great Southern Bancorp 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Great Southern Bancorp has high operating costs in the Regional Banks industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Great Southern Bancorp lucrative customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Regional Banks industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Great Southern Bancorp 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 Regional Banks industry.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Great Southern Bancorp is one of the leading players in the Regional Banks industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Regional Banks industry in last five years.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Great Southern Bancorp has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Regional Banks 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 Regional Banks industry, Great Southern Bancorp 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Great Southern Bancorp has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Employees’ less understanding of Great Southern Bancorp strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Great Southern Bancorp 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Great Southern Bancorp needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Great Southern Bancorp has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Regional Banks industry over the last five years. Great Southern Bancorp 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.
Great Southern Bancorp Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Great Southern Bancorp are -
Buying journey improvements
– Great Southern Bancorp can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Regional Banks 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Great Southern Bancorp 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 Southern Bancorp to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Great Southern Bancorp to increase its market reach. Great Southern Bancorp 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 Great Southern Bancorp in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Regional Banks industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Manufacturing automation
– Great Southern Bancorp can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Regional Banks 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Great Southern Bancorp 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Great Southern Bancorp 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 Regional Banks industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Great Southern Bancorp in the Regional Banks industry. Now Great Southern Bancorp can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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 Southern Bancorp can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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 Southern Bancorp can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Great Southern Bancorp operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Regional Banks sector.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Regional Banks industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Great Southern Bancorp 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 Southern Bancorp 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Great Southern Bancorp 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 Regional Banks industry.
Developing new processes and practices
– Great Southern Bancorp can develop new processes and procedures in Regional Banks industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Threats Great Southern Bancorp External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Great Southern Bancorp are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Great Southern Bancorp 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Great Southern Bancorp is facing in Regional Banks sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
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. Great Southern Bancorp 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Regional Banks industry are lowering. It can presents Great Southern Bancorp with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Regional Banks sector.
Increasing wage structure of Great Southern Bancorp
– 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 Southern Bancorp.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Regional Banks industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Great Southern Bancorp can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Great Southern Bancorp needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Regional Banks 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 Great Southern Bancorp in the Regional Banks sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Great Southern Bancorp demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in Regional Banks industry and other sectors.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Great Southern Bancorp has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Regional Banks industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Great Southern Bancorp needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Regional Banks sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
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 Southern Bancorp.
Regulatory challenges
– Great Southern Bancorp needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Regional Banks industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Great Southern Bancorp Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Great Southern Bancorp 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 Southern Bancorp 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 Southern Bancorp 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 Southern Bancorp 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 Southern Bancorp needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
