Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund (RMT) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Misc. Financial Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
technology disruption, increasing energy prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund
2. Improving business portfolio management of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Misc. Financial Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund
Strengths of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund are -
Organizational Resilience of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Misc. Financial Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High brand equity
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund is one of the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund is one of the most innovative firm in Misc. Financial Services sector.
Strong track record of project management in the Misc. Financial Services industry
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund in Misc. Financial Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Misc. Financial Services 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.
Analytics focus
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services industry. The technology infrastructure of United States is also helping it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Learning organization
- Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Misc. Financial Services industry
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Misc. Financial Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Weaknesses of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund is one of the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Misc. Financial Services industry in last five years.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund, in the dynamic environment of Misc. Financial Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Misc. Financial Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund is just above the Misc. Financial Services 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Misc. Financial Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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 Misc. Financial Services industry.
Employees’ less understanding of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Misc. Financial Services industry over the last five years. Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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.
Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund can develop new processes and procedures in Misc. Financial Services 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund can utilize new technology in the field of Misc. Financial Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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.
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. Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Misc. Financial Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Buying journey improvements
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Misc. Financial Services 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Misc. Financial Services industry. This can help Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund to build a more holistic ecosystem for Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund products in the Misc. Financial Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund to increase its market reach. Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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.
Threats Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund in Misc. Financial Services industry. The Misc. Financial Services 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.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in Misc. Financial Services industry and other sectors.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund is facing in Misc. Financial Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund prominent markets.
Environmental challenges
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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. Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Misc. Financial Services industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Misc. Financial Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Misc. Financial Services sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund in the Misc. Financial Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Misc. Financial Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Misc. Financial Services sector.
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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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 Misc. Financial Services industry.
Increasing wage structure of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund
– 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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund 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 Royce Micro Cap Closed Fund needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.