Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Malayan Banking Berhad is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing transportation and logistics costs, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing commodity prices,
wage bills are increasing, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Malayan Banking Berhad
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Malayan Banking Berhad can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Malayan Banking Berhad, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Malayan Banking Berhad
2. Improving business portfolio management of Malayan Banking Berhad
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 Malayan Banking Berhad
Strengths of Malayan Banking Berhad | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Malayan Banking Berhad are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Malayan Banking Berhad has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Malayan Banking Berhad 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
- Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Malayan Banking Berhad emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Malayan Banking Berhad in the sector have low bargaining power. Malayan Banking Berhad has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Malayan Banking Berhad to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High brand equity
– Malayan Banking Berhad has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Malayan Banking Berhad to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Training and development
– Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Malayan Banking Berhad has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
Organizational Resilience of Malayan Banking Berhad
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Malayan Banking Berhad does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
Ability to lead change in
– Malayan Banking Berhad is one of the leading players in the industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Malayan Banking Berhad in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses of Malayan Banking Berhad | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Malayan Banking Berhad are -
Employees’ less understanding of Malayan Banking Berhad strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad lucrative customers.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Malayan Banking Berhad, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Malayan Banking Berhad 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. Malayan Banking Berhad should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
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 Malayan Banking Berhad supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Malayan Banking Berhad is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Malayan Banking Berhad vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High dependence on Malayan Banking Berhad ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Malayan Banking Berhad still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Malayan Banking Berhad has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Lack of clear differentiation of Malayan Banking Berhad products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Malayan Banking Berhad 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, Malayan Banking Berhad is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Malayan Banking Berhad to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Malayan Banking Berhad needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Malayan Banking Berhad, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Malayan Banking Berhad has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Malayan Banking Berhad Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Malayan Banking Berhad 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. Malayan Banking Berhad can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Malayan Banking Berhad to build a more holistic ecosystem for Malayan Banking Berhad products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
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. Malayan Banking Berhad 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. Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Malayan Banking Berhad can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Malayan Banking Berhad can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Malayan Banking Berhad to increase its market reach. Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
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 Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Malayan Banking Berhad is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Malayan Banking Berhad are -
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 Malayan Banking Berhad business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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. Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
Increasing wage structure of Malayan Banking Berhad
– 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 Malayan Banking Berhad.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Malayan Banking Berhad has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
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 Malayan Banking Berhad.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Malayan Banking Berhad 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. Malayan Banking Berhad can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad prominent markets.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Malayan Banking Berhad with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Malayan Banking Berhad 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad 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 Malayan Banking Berhad needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.