Cushing Renaissance Fund (SZC) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Cushing Renaissance Fund (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Cushing Renaissance Fund is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Cushing Renaissance Fund
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Cushing Renaissance Fund can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Cushing Renaissance Fund, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Cushing Renaissance 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 Cushing Renaissance Fund can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Cushing Renaissance Fund
2. Improving business portfolio management of Cushing Renaissance Fund
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 Cushing Renaissance Fund
Strengths of Cushing Renaissance Fund | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Cushing Renaissance Fund are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Cushing Renaissance Fund 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.
Ability to lead change in
– Cushing Renaissance Fund is one of the leading players in the industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Cushing Renaissance Fund in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Diverse revenue streams
– Cushing Renaissance Fund is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Cushing Renaissance Fund 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Cushing Renaissance Fund 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 Cushing Renaissance Fund have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Learning organization
- Cushing Renaissance 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 Cushing Renaissance Fund is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Cushing Renaissance Fund emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Cushing Renaissance Fund in the sector have low bargaining power. Cushing Renaissance Fund has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Cushing Renaissance Fund to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Cushing Renaissance Fund digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Cushing Renaissance Fund 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Cushing Renaissance Fund in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Organizational Resilience of Cushing Renaissance Fund
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Cushing Renaissance Fund does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Cushing Renaissance Fund 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 brand equity
– Cushing Renaissance Fund has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Cushing Renaissance Fund to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– Cushing Renaissance 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.
Weaknesses of Cushing Renaissance Fund | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Cushing Renaissance Fund are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Cushing Renaissance Fund needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Need for greater diversity
– Cushing Renaissance 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Cushing Renaissance Fund, 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 dependence on Cushing Renaissance Fund ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Cushing Renaissance Fund still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Cushing Renaissance Fund has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Cushing Renaissance Fund is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but Cushing Renaissance Fund needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Cushing Renaissance Fund to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Cushing Renaissance Fund 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.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Cushing Renaissance Fund 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 Cushing Renaissance Fund, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Cushing Renaissance Fund has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Cushing Renaissance Fund is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Cushing Renaissance Fund to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Cushing Renaissance 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 industry.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Cushing Renaissance 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.
Cushing Renaissance Fund Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Cushing Renaissance Fund are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Cushing Renaissance 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Cushing Renaissance Fund is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Cushing Renaissance Fund 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Cushing Renaissance 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Cushing Renaissance Fund 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Cushing Renaissance Fund to increase its market reach. Cushing Renaissance 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.
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 Cushing Renaissance Fund in the industry. Now Cushing Renaissance Fund can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Cushing Renaissance Fund can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Cushing Renaissance Fund operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Buying journey improvements
– Cushing Renaissance Fund can improve the customer journey of consumers in the 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.
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. Cushing Renaissance Fund 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. Cushing Renaissance Fund 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Cushing Renaissance Fund 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 Cushing Renaissance Fund to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Cushing Renaissance Fund to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Cushing Renaissance 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 industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Cushing Renaissance 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Cushing Renaissance 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 Cushing Renaissance Fund to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Cushing Renaissance Fund External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Cushing Renaissance Fund are -
Environmental challenges
– Cushing Renaissance 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. Cushing Renaissance Fund can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
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. Cushing Renaissance Fund can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Cushing Renaissance Fund in industry. The 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.
Increasing wage structure of Cushing Renaissance 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 Cushing Renaissance Fund.
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. Cushing Renaissance Fund 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Cushing Renaissance 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 industry and other sectors.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Cushing Renaissance Fund with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Regulatory challenges
– Cushing Renaissance Fund 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.
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 Cushing Renaissance Fund business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Cushing Renaissance Fund in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Cushing Renaissance 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 sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Cushing Renaissance Fund 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Cushing Renaissance Fund is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Cushing Renaissance Fund Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Cushing Renaissance 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 Cushing Renaissance 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 Cushing Renaissance 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 Cushing Renaissance 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 Cushing Renaissance Fund needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.