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Legg Mason ELKS (LMHB) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Legg Mason ELKS (United States)


Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Legg Mason ELKS is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing energy prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, wage bills are increasing, increasing commodity prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, etc



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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Legg Mason ELKS


SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Legg Mason ELKS can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Legg Mason ELKS, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Legg Mason 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 Legg Mason ELKS can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Legg Mason ELKS
2. Improving business portfolio management of Legg Mason 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 Legg Mason ELKS




Strengths of Legg Mason ELKS | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Legg Mason ELKS are -

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Legg Mason 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.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Legg Mason ELKS has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Legg Mason 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.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Legg Mason 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.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Legg Mason ELKS 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.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Legg Mason ELKS in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

Innovation driven organization

– Legg Mason ELKS is one of the most innovative firm in sector.

Strong track record of project management in the industry

– Legg Mason ELKS is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

High brand equity

– Legg Mason ELKS has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Legg Mason ELKS to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Low bargaining power of suppliers

– Suppliers of Legg Mason ELKS in the sector have low bargaining power. Legg Mason ELKS has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Legg Mason ELKS to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Legg Mason 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 Legg Mason ELKS have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Learning organization

- Legg Mason 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 Legg Mason ELKS is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Legg Mason ELKS emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Analytics focus

– Legg Mason ELKS 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 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.






Weaknesses of Legg Mason ELKS | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Legg Mason ELKS are -

Employees’ less understanding of Legg Mason ELKS strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Legg Mason ELKS 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.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Legg Mason ELKS is just above the 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 dependence on existing supply chain

– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Legg Mason ELKS supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Legg Mason ELKS is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Legg Mason ELKS vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

Lack of clear differentiation of Legg Mason ELKS products

– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Legg Mason 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, Legg Mason ELKS is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Legg Mason ELKS to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Workers concerns about automation

– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Legg Mason ELKS 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.

High dependence on Legg Mason ELKS ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Legg Mason 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 Legg Mason ELKS has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Legg Mason 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.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Legg Mason ELKS 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.

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Legg Mason ELKS 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. Legg Mason ELKS 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 Legg Mason ELKS is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but Legg Mason ELKS needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Legg Mason ELKS to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.




Legg Mason ELKS Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis


The opportunities of Legg Mason ELKS are -

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. Legg Mason 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. Legg Mason 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.

Developing new processes and practices

– Legg Mason ELKS can develop new processes and procedures in 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.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Legg Mason ELKS can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Legg Mason ELKS 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.

Buying journey improvements

– Legg Mason ELKS can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.

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 Legg Mason ELKS in the industry. Now Legg Mason ELKS can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

Loyalty marketing

– Legg Mason 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.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Legg Mason 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 Legg Mason 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Legg Mason 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 Legg Mason ELKS to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Legg Mason ELKS to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Legg Mason ELKS can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Legg Mason ELKS operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Legg Mason ELKS 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 Legg Mason ELKS to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

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. Legg Mason ELKS can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Legg Mason ELKS is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Legg Mason ELKS 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.




Threats Legg Mason ELKS External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis


The threats of Legg Mason ELKS are -

Aging population

– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Legg Mason ELKS has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Legg Mason 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.

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. Legg Mason ELKS 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.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Legg Mason 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.

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 Legg Mason ELKS.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Legg Mason ELKS 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.

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Legg Mason ELKS with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Legg Mason 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 Legg Mason ELKS prominent markets.

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 Legg Mason ELKS in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Legg Mason 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.

Increasing wage structure of Legg Mason ELKS

– 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 Legg Mason ELKS.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Legg Mason ELKS is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Legg Mason ELKS 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.




Weighted SWOT Analysis of Legg Mason ELKS Template, Example


Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Legg Mason 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 Legg Mason 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 Legg Mason 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 Legg Mason 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 Legg Mason ELKS needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.



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