Hancock Holding Co ELKS (HBHCL) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Hancock Holding Co ELKS (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Hancock Holding Co ELKS is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
there is backlash against globalization, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Hancock Holding Co ELKS
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Hancock Holding Co ELKS can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Hancock Holding Co ELKS, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Hancock Holding Co ELKS
2. Improving business portfolio management of Hancock Holding Co ELKS
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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS
Strengths of Hancock Holding Co ELKS | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Hancock Holding Co ELKS are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Hancock Holding Co ELKS staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Learning organization
- Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Hancock Holding Co ELKS emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Hancock Holding Co ELKS in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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.
Organizational Resilience of Hancock Holding Co ELKS
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Hancock Holding Co ELKS does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Hancock Holding Co ELKS digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS is one of the leading players in the industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Hancock Holding Co ELKS | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Hancock Holding Co ELKS are -
Need for greater diversity
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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.
High dependence on Hancock Holding Co ELKS ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Hancock Holding Co ELKS still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Hancock Holding Co ELKS has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Hancock Holding Co ELKS products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Hancock Holding Co ELKS needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Hancock Holding Co ELKS is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Hancock Holding Co ELKS to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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. Hancock Holding Co ELKS should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Hancock Holding Co ELKS is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but Hancock Holding Co ELKS needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Hancock Holding Co ELKS to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS lucrative customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Hancock Holding Co ELKS, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Hancock Holding Co ELKS has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Hancock Holding Co ELKS is planning to shift buying processes online.
Hancock Holding Co ELKS Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Hancock Holding Co ELKS are -
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. Hancock Holding Co ELKS can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Hancock Holding Co ELKS can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS in the industry. Now Hancock Holding Co ELKS can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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.
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. Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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. Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Manufacturing automation
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Hancock Holding Co ELKS can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Hancock Holding Co ELKS operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Hancock Holding Co ELKS to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Hancock Holding Co ELKS has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Hancock Holding Co ELKS to build a more holistic ecosystem for Hancock Holding Co ELKS products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Hancock Holding Co ELKS External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Hancock Holding Co ELKS are -
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. Hancock Holding Co ELKS can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS prominent markets.
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.
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. Hancock Holding Co ELKS needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Hancock Holding Co ELKS is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Hancock Holding Co ELKS in industry. The industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
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.
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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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.
Environmental challenges
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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. Hancock Holding Co ELKS can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Hancock Holding Co ELKS can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the industry.
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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Hancock Holding Co ELKS Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS 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 Hancock Holding Co ELKS needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.