Stewardship (SSFN) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Stewardship (United States)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Stewardship is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, wage bills are increasing, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, technology disruption, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Stewardship

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Stewardship can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Stewardship, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Stewardship 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Stewardship can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Stewardship
2. Improving business portfolio management of Stewardship
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Regional Banks sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Stewardship

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Strengths of Stewardship | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Stewardship are -

Innovation driven organization

– Stewardship is one of the most innovative firm in Regional Banks sector.

High brand equity

– Stewardship has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Stewardship to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Diverse revenue streams

– Stewardship is present in almost all the verticals within the Regional Banks industry. This has provided Stewardship a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.

Ability to lead change in Regional Banks

– Stewardship is one of the leading players in the Regional Banks industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Regional Banks industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Stewardship in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Stewardship 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.

Organizational Resilience of Stewardship

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Stewardship does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Sustainable margins compare to other players in Regional Banks industry

– Stewardship has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Stewardship to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Regional Banks industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Stewardship to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Stewardship comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Regional Banks 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.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Stewardship has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Stewardship staying ahead in the Regional Banks industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

Strong track record of project management in the Regional Banks industry

– Stewardship is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Stewardship is one of the leading players in the Regional Banks 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

– Stewardship has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Regional Banks industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Stewardship have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

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Weaknesses of Stewardship | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Stewardship are -

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Stewardship has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Regional Banks industry over the last five years. Stewardship 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.

Interest costs

– Compare to the competition, Stewardship 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.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Stewardship has high operating costs in the Regional Banks industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Stewardship lucrative customers.

High bargaining power of channel partners in Regional Banks industry

– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Stewardship 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 Regional Banks industry.

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of United States, Stewardship needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

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 Stewardship supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Stewardship is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Stewardship vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Stewardship is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Stewardship to provide better information regarding Regional Banks products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Lack of clear differentiation of Stewardship products

– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Stewardship needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Stewardship has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Regional Banks industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.

No frontier risks strategy

– From the 10K / annual statement of Stewardship, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Regional Banks 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.

Skills based hiring in Regional Banks industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Stewardship 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.

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Stewardship Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Stewardship are -

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Stewardship has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Regional Banks sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Stewardship to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Stewardship to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Regional Banks industry

– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Stewardship in the Regional Banks industry. Now Stewardship can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Stewardship 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.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Stewardship can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

Developing new processes and practices

– Stewardship can develop new processes and procedures in Regional Banks 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.

Manufacturing automation

– Stewardship can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Regional Banks sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.

Loyalty marketing

– Stewardship 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.

Increase in government spending

– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Stewardship can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Stewardship operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Regional Banks sector.

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Stewardship is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Stewardship can utilize new technology in the field of Regional Banks industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.

Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities

– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Stewardship 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 Stewardship to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.

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 Stewardship 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.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Regional Banks industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Stewardship 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. Stewardship 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.

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of Stewardship has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Regional Banks industry. This can help Stewardship to build a more holistic ecosystem for Stewardship products in the Regional Banks industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

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Threats Stewardship External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Stewardship 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 Stewardship in the Regional Banks sector and impact the bottomline 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 Stewardship business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, 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.

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 Stewardship.

Environmental challenges

– Stewardship 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. Stewardship can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Regional Banks industry.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Stewardship has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Regional Banks industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Stewardship needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Regional Banks 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.

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. Stewardship 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.

Regulatory challenges

– Stewardship 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 Regional Banks industry regulations.

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.

Shortening product life cycle

– it is one of the major threat that Stewardship is facing in Regional Banks sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.

Increasing wage structure of Stewardship

– 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 Stewardship.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Stewardship 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 Regional Banks industry.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Stewardship 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 Regional Banks industry and other sectors.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Stewardship Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Stewardship 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 Stewardship 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 Stewardship 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 Stewardship 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 Stewardship needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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