PICC Property and Casualty (PPCCY) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for PICC Property and Casualty (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , PICC Property and Casualty is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing energy prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, wage bills are increasing, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of PICC Property and Casualty
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that PICC Property and Casualty can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the PICC Property and Casualty, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which PICC Property and Casualty 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 PICC Property and Casualty can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of PICC Property and Casualty
2. Improving business portfolio management of PICC Property and Casualty
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 PICC Property and Casualty
Strengths of PICC Property and Casualty | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of PICC Property and Casualty are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the PICC Property and Casualty 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.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For PICC Property and Casualty digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. PICC Property and Casualty has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
High brand equity
– PICC Property and Casualty has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled PICC Property and Casualty to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– PICC Property and Casualty 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 PICC Property and Casualty have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– PICC Property and Casualty is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– PICC Property and Casualty has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled PICC Property and Casualty to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped PICC Property and Casualty to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– PICC Property and Casualty has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. PICC Property and Casualty 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– PICC Property and Casualty has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – PICC Property and Casualty staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Organizational Resilience of PICC Property and Casualty
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing PICC Property and Casualty does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- PICC Property and Casualty 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 PICC Property and Casualty is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at PICC Property and Casualty emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of PICC Property and Casualty in the sector have low bargaining power. PICC Property and Casualty has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps PICC Property and Casualty to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of PICC Property and Casualty in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of PICC Property and Casualty | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of PICC Property and Casualty are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of PICC Property and Casualty 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 PICC Property and Casualty ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of PICC Property and Casualty still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though PICC Property and Casualty has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of PICC Property and Casualty, 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 cash cycle compare to competitors
PICC Property and Casualty 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, PICC Property and Casualty 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.
Need for greater diversity
– PICC Property and Casualty 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, PICC Property and Casualty 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at PICC Property and Casualty, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. PICC Property and Casualty has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, PICC Property and Casualty 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 PICC Property and Casualty lucrative customers.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, PICC Property and Casualty is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help PICC Property and Casualty to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Employees’ less understanding of PICC Property and Casualty strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of PICC Property and Casualty 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.
PICC Property and Casualty Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of PICC Property and Casualty 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. PICC Property and Casualty 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. PICC Property and Casualty 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, PICC Property and Casualty 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 PICC Property and Casualty to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Loyalty marketing
– PICC Property and Casualty 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at PICC Property and Casualty 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.
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 PICC Property and Casualty 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for PICC Property and Casualty 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for PICC Property and Casualty 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help PICC Property and Casualty to increase its market reach. PICC Property and Casualty 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, PICC Property and Casualty can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that PICC Property and Casualty operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– PICC Property and Casualty 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.
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 PICC Property and Casualty in the industry. Now PICC Property and Casualty can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects PICC Property and Casualty can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– PICC Property and Casualty 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 PICC Property and Casualty to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help PICC Property and Casualty to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats PICC Property and Casualty External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of PICC Property and Casualty are -
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.
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 PICC Property and Casualty business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– PICC Property and Casualty 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– PICC Property and Casualty 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, PICC Property and Casualty 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.
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. PICC Property and Casualty can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of PICC Property and Casualty
– 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 PICC Property and Casualty.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that PICC Property and Casualty is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents PICC Property and Casualty 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, PICC Property and Casualty 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 PICC Property and Casualty prominent markets.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– PICC Property and Casualty 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.
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 PICC Property and Casualty in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. PICC Property and Casualty 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 PICC Property and Casualty Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at PICC Property and Casualty 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 PICC Property and Casualty 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 PICC Property and Casualty 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 PICC Property and Casualty 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 PICC Property and Casualty needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.