Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income (FAP) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Misc. Financial Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income (Canada)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, technology disruption, geopolitical disruptions, there is backlash against globalization,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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 Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income
2. Improving business portfolio management of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Canada
4. Making a Misc. Financial Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income
Strengths of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income staying ahead in the Misc. Financial Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income is present in almost all the verticals within the Misc. Financial Services industry. This has provided Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Ability to lead change in Misc. Financial Services
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income is one of the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services industry in Canada. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Misc. Financial Services industry in Canada but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Analytics focus
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services industry. The technology infrastructure of Canada 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.
Digital Transformation in Misc. Financial Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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.
High brand equity
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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 Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income has one of the best training and development program in Financial industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income in Misc. Financial Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Innovation driven organization
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income is one of the most innovative firm in Misc. Financial Services sector.
Organizational Resilience of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income has some of the most successful models in the Misc. Financial Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Misc. Financial Services industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income is one of the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Misc. Financial Services industry in last five years.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income, in the dynamic environment of Misc. Financial Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Canada, Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Skills based hiring in Misc. Financial Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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, Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Misc. Financial Services industry over the last five years. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income has high operating costs in the Misc. Financial Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income lucrative customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income is just above the Misc. Financial Services industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Misc. Financial Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Canada, Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the Misc. Financial Services industry.
Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income are -
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Misc. Financial Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Misc. Financial Services sector.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income can utilize new technology in the field of Misc. Financial Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Misc. Financial Services industry. This can help Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income to build a more holistic ecosystem for Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income products in the Misc. Financial Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Misc. Financial Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Loyalty marketing
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income to increase its market reach. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Misc. Financial Services sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
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. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Misc. Financial Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income are -
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 Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income.
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. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Misc. Financial Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income is facing in Misc. Financial Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Misc. Financial Services industry regulations.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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 Misc. Financial Services industry.
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. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Misc. Financial Services sector.
Increasing wage structure of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income
– 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 Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income.
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 Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income in the Misc. Financial Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in Misc. Financial Services industry and other sectors.
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 Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Misc. Financial Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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 Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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 Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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 Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income 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 Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.