PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR (PNC_pp) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing commodity prices, there is backlash against globalization, wage bills are increasing,
cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR
2. Improving business portfolio management of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR
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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR
Strengths of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
High brand equity
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Innovation driven organization
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Ability to recruit top talent
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 switching costs
– The high switching costs that PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Learning organization
- PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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. PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR, 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR lucrative customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Need for greater diversity
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 cash cycle compare to competitors
PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Employees’ less understanding of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR are -
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR to build a more holistic ecosystem for PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Buying journey improvements
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Developing new processes and practices
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
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. PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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. PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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, PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR prominent markets.
Increasing wage structure of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR
– 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR.
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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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, PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
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. PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR 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 PNC Financial Services Group Pp ADR needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.