Australian Leaders Fund Ltd (ALF) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Misc. Financial Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Australian Leaders Fund Ltd (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Australian Leaders Fund Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , geopolitical disruptions, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Australian Leaders Fund Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Australian Leaders Fund Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Misc. Financial Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd
Strengths of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Misc. Financial Services industry
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Australian Leaders Fund Ltd to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Misc. Financial Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Australian Leaders Fund Ltd to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High brand equity
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Australian Leaders Fund Ltd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Training and development
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Australian Leaders Fund Ltd has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Australian Leaders Fund Ltd has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Australian Leaders Fund Ltd to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Digital Transformation in Misc. Financial Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Australian Leaders Fund Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd is present in almost all the verticals within the Misc. Financial Services industry. This has provided Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Misc. Financial Services industry
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Australia, Australian Leaders Fund Ltd needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Misc. Financial Services 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 Misc. Financial Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd, in the dynamic environment of Misc. Financial Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Australian Leaders Fund Ltd has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Australian Leaders Fund Ltd has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Misc. Financial Services industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Employees’ less understanding of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Australian Leaders Fund Ltd has some of the most successful models in the Misc. Financial Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Australian Leaders Fund Ltd should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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. Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Australian Leaders Fund Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Misc. Financial Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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. Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Misc. Financial Services industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Australian Leaders Fund Ltd in the Misc. Financial Services industry. Now Australian Leaders Fund Ltd can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Misc. Financial Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Australian Leaders Fund Ltd to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Australian Leaders Fund Ltd to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Australian Leaders Fund Ltd can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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, Australian Leaders Fund Ltd can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Australian Leaders Fund Ltd operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Misc. Financial Services sector.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
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. Australian Leaders Fund Ltd can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Australian Leaders Fund Ltd to increase its market reach. Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd are -
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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Misc. Financial Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Misc. Financial Services industry are lowering. It can presents Australian Leaders Fund Ltd with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Misc. Financial Services sector.
Environmental challenges
– Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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. Australian Leaders Fund Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Misc. Financial Services industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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, Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd prominent markets.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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.
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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd in the Misc. Financial Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd
– 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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Australian Leaders Fund Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd 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 Australian Leaders Fund Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
