SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Mid-Southern Bancorp (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Mid-Southern Bancorp is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing energy prices, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing household debt because of falling income levels, geopolitical disruptions, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
increasing commodity prices, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Mid-Southern Bancorp
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Mid-Southern Bancorp can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Mid-Southern Bancorp, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Mid-Southern Bancorp operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Mid-Southern Bancorp can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Mid-Southern Bancorp
2. Improving business portfolio management of Mid-Southern Bancorp
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 Mid-Southern Bancorp
Strengths of Mid-Southern Bancorp | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Mid-Southern Bancorp are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– Mid-Southern Bancorp has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Mid-Southern Bancorp to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Mid-Southern Bancorp to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Mid-Southern Bancorp digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Mid-Southern Bancorp 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Mid-Southern Bancorp has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Mid-Southern Bancorp staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– Mid-Southern Bancorp is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Mid-Southern Bancorp in the sector have low bargaining power. Mid-Southern Bancorp has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Mid-Southern Bancorp to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High brand equity
– Mid-Southern Bancorp has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Mid-Southern Bancorp to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Mid-Southern Bancorp 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Mid-Southern Bancorp are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Mid-Southern Bancorp has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Mid-Southern Bancorp have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to lead change in
– Mid-Southern Bancorp 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 Mid-Southern Bancorp in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Mid-Southern Bancorp has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Mid-Southern Bancorp has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Training and development
– Mid-Southern Bancorp 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.
Weaknesses of Mid-Southern Bancorp | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Mid-Southern Bancorp are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Mid-Southern Bancorp has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Mid-Southern Bancorp even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Mid-Southern Bancorp is one of the leading players in the industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Mid-Southern Bancorp is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Lack of clear differentiation of Mid-Southern Bancorp products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Mid-Southern Bancorp 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, Mid-Southern Bancorp is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Mid-Southern Bancorp to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Mid-Southern Bancorp 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Mid-Southern Bancorp has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Mid-Southern Bancorp has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
High dependence on Mid-Southern Bancorp ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Mid-Southern Bancorp still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Mid-Southern Bancorp has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Mid-Southern Bancorp 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 Mid-Southern Bancorp supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Mid-Southern Bancorp is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Mid-Southern Bancorp vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Mid-Southern Bancorp Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Mid-Southern Bancorp 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. Mid-Southern Bancorp can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Mid-Southern Bancorp can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Mid-Southern Bancorp can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Mid-Southern Bancorp operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Mid-Southern Bancorp 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 Mid-Southern Bancorp has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Mid-Southern Bancorp to build a more holistic ecosystem for Mid-Southern Bancorp products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Mid-Southern Bancorp can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Manufacturing automation
– Mid-Southern Bancorp 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Mid-Southern Bancorp 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 Mid-Southern Bancorp to increase its market reach. Mid-Southern Bancorp will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Developing new processes and practices
– Mid-Southern Bancorp 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Mid-Southern Bancorp 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Mid-Southern Bancorp to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
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 Mid-Southern Bancorp in the industry. Now Mid-Southern Bancorp can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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. Mid-Southern Bancorp can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Threats Mid-Southern Bancorp External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Mid-Southern Bancorp are -
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 Mid-Southern Bancorp in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. Mid-Southern Bancorp can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Mid-Southern Bancorp with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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. Mid-Southern Bancorp will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Mid-Southern Bancorp 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 Mid-Southern Bancorp 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.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Mid-Southern Bancorp 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Mid-Southern Bancorp is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Mid-Southern Bancorp
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Mid-Southern Bancorp.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Mid-Southern Bancorp high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Environmental challenges
– Mid-Southern Bancorp 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. Mid-Southern Bancorp can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Mid-Southern Bancorp 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Mid-Southern Bancorp Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Mid-Southern Bancorp needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of Mid-Southern Bancorp is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of Mid-Southern Bancorp is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Mid-Southern Bancorp to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Mid-Southern Bancorp needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
