Prudential Public ADR (PUK) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Insurance (Life)
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Prudential Public ADR (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Prudential Public ADR is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, there is backlash against globalization, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Prudential Public ADR
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Prudential Public ADR can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Prudential Public ADR, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Prudential Public 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 Prudential Public ADR can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Prudential Public ADR
2. Improving business portfolio management of Prudential Public ADR
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Insurance (Life) sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Prudential Public ADR
Strengths of Prudential Public ADR | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Prudential Public ADR are -
Ability to lead change in Insurance (Life)
– Prudential Public ADR is one of the leading players in the Insurance (Life) industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Insurance (Life) industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Prudential Public ADR in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Insurance (Life) industry
– Prudential Public ADR has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Prudential Public ADR to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Insurance (Life) industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Prudential Public ADR to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Insurance (Life) industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Prudential Public ADR digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Prudential Public 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Prudential Public ADR comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Insurance (Life) 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 switching costs
– The high switching costs that Prudential Public 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Prudential Public ADR is one of the leading players in the Insurance (Life) 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Prudential Public ADR has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Insurance (Life) industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Prudential Public ADR have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Prudential Public ADR 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.
Training and development
– Prudential Public ADR has one of the best training and development program in Financial 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Prudential Public ADR has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Prudential Public ADR staying ahead in the Insurance (Life) industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Prudential Public ADR in Insurance (Life) industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Strong track record of project management in the Insurance (Life) industry
– Prudential Public 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.
Weaknesses of Prudential Public ADR | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Prudential Public ADR are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Insurance (Life) industry, Prudential Public 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Prudential Public ADR needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Insurance (Life) industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Prudential Public ADR can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Prudential Public ADR is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Prudential Public 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 Insurance (Life) industry over the last five years. Prudential Public 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Prudential Public ADR is just above the Insurance (Life) 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.
Skills based hiring in Insurance (Life) industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Prudential Public ADR 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Prudential Public ADR, in the dynamic environment of Insurance (Life) industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Prudential Public ADR has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Prudential Public ADR has some of the most successful models in the Insurance (Life) industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Prudential Public ADR should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Prudential Public ADR, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Insurance (Life) 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Prudential Public ADR is one of the leading players in the Insurance (Life) industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Insurance (Life) industry in last five years.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Prudential Public ADR has high operating costs in the Insurance (Life) industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Prudential Public ADR lucrative customers.
Employees’ less understanding of Prudential Public ADR strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Prudential Public 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.
Prudential Public ADR Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Prudential Public ADR are -
Buying journey improvements
– Prudential Public ADR can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Insurance (Life) 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Prudential Public ADR 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 Insurance (Life) industry.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Insurance (Life) industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Prudential Public ADR can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Prudential Public 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 Prudential Public ADR to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Prudential Public ADR can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Prudential Public ADR operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Insurance (Life) sector.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Prudential Public ADR can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Prudential Public 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Prudential Public ADR in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Insurance (Life) industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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. Prudential Public ADR can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Loyalty marketing
– Prudential Public 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Prudential Public 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 Prudential Public 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.
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 Prudential Public 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Insurance (Life) industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Prudential Public ADR in the Insurance (Life) industry. Now Prudential Public ADR can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Prudential Public ADR External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Prudential Public ADR 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 Prudential Public ADR in the Insurance (Life) sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Insurance (Life) industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Prudential Public ADR can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Prudential Public ADR is facing in Insurance (Life) sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Prudential Public ADR needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Insurance (Life) industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Prudential Public 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 Insurance (Life) sector.
Increasing wage structure of Prudential Public 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 Prudential Public ADR.
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.
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 Prudential Public ADR.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Prudential Public 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 Prudential Public ADR prominent markets.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Prudential Public 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 Insurance (Life) industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Prudential Public 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Prudential Public ADR in Insurance (Life) industry. The Insurance (Life) 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 Prudential Public ADR Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Prudential Public 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 Prudential Public 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 Prudential Public 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 Prudential Public 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 Prudential Public ADR needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.