Svenska Handelsbanken PK (SVNLY) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Svenska Handelsbanken PK (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Svenska Handelsbanken PK is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, technology disruption,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Svenska Handelsbanken PK
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Svenska Handelsbanken PK can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Svenska Handelsbanken PK, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Svenska Handelsbanken PK
2. Improving business portfolio management of Svenska Handelsbanken PK
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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK
Strengths of Svenska Handelsbanken PK | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Svenska Handelsbanken PK are -
Training and development
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK has one of the best training and development program in 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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.
High brand equity
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Svenska Handelsbanken PK to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Analytics focus
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 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.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Svenska Handelsbanken PK emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Svenska Handelsbanken PK staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Svenska Handelsbanken PK comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Svenska Handelsbanken PK in the sector have low bargaining power. Svenska Handelsbanken PK has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Svenska Handelsbanken PK to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of Svenska Handelsbanken PK | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Svenska Handelsbanken PK are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Svenska Handelsbanken PK needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Svenska Handelsbanken PK can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Svenska Handelsbanken PK is planning to shift buying processes online.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Svenska Handelsbanken PK has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Svenska Handelsbanken PK is just above the industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Svenska Handelsbanken PK is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Svenska Handelsbanken PK to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Svenska Handelsbanken PK is one of the leading players in the industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK lucrative customers.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Svenska Handelsbanken PK needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Lack of clear differentiation of Svenska Handelsbanken PK products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Svenska Handelsbanken PK needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Svenska Handelsbanken PK has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Svenska Handelsbanken PK Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Svenska Handelsbanken PK are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Svenska Handelsbanken PK can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Svenska Handelsbanken PK to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Svenska Handelsbanken PK has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Svenska Handelsbanken PK to build a more holistic ecosystem for Svenska Handelsbanken PK products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, 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, Svenska Handelsbanken PK can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Svenska Handelsbanken PK operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK in the industry. Now Svenska Handelsbanken PK can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Developing new processes and practices
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK can develop new processes and procedures in industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
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. Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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. Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Svenska Handelsbanken PK can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Manufacturing automation
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Svenska Handelsbanken PK is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Svenska Handelsbanken PK can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Threats Svenska Handelsbanken PK External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Svenska Handelsbanken PK are -
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. Svenska Handelsbanken PK needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 industry and other sectors.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Svenska Handelsbanken PK with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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. Svenska Handelsbanken PK can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Environmental challenges
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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. Svenska Handelsbanken PK can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK prominent markets.
Regulatory challenges
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Svenska Handelsbanken PK is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Svenska Handelsbanken PK Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK 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 Svenska Handelsbanken PK needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.