SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Propel Funeral Partners (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Propel Funeral Partners is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, geopolitical disruptions, wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, technology disruption, increasing commodity prices,
central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Propel Funeral Partners
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Propel Funeral Partners can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Propel Funeral Partners, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Propel Funeral Partners 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 Propel Funeral Partners can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Propel Funeral Partners
2. Improving business portfolio management of Propel Funeral Partners
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Personal Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Propel Funeral Partners
Strengths of Propel Funeral Partners | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Propel Funeral Partners are -
Organizational Resilience of Propel Funeral Partners
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Propel Funeral Partners does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Analytics focus
– Propel Funeral Partners 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 Personal Services industry. The technology infrastructure of Australia 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Personal Services industry
– Propel Funeral Partners has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Propel Funeral Partners to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Personal Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Propel Funeral Partners to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Personal Services industry
– Propel Funeral Partners is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Diverse revenue streams
– Propel Funeral Partners is present in almost all the verticals within the Personal Services industry. This has provided Propel Funeral Partners 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 brand equity
– Propel Funeral Partners has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Propel Funeral Partners to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Propel Funeral Partners 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 Propel Funeral Partners is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Propel Funeral Partners emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Propel Funeral Partners is one of the leading players in the Personal Services industry in Australia. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Australia. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Propel Funeral Partners in Personal Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Propel Funeral Partners has one of the best training and development program in Services 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Propel Funeral Partners has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Propel Funeral Partners staying ahead in the Personal Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Ability to lead change in Personal Services
– Propel Funeral Partners is one of the leading players in the Personal Services industry in Australia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Personal Services industry in Australia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Propel Funeral Partners in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Weaknesses of Propel Funeral Partners | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Propel Funeral Partners are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Propel Funeral Partners has high operating costs in the Personal Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Propel Funeral Partners lucrative customers.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Propel Funeral Partners has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Personal 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.
High dependence on Propel Funeral Partners ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Propel Funeral Partners still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Personal Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Propel Funeral Partners has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Personal Services industry, Propel Funeral Partners needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Propel Funeral Partners, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Personal 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Australia, Propel Funeral Partners needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Skills based hiring in Personal Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Propel Funeral Partners 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Propel Funeral Partners has some of the most successful models in the Personal Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Propel Funeral Partners should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Propel Funeral Partners is just above the Personal Services industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Personal Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Australia, Propel Funeral Partners 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 Personal Services industry.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Propel Funeral Partners has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Personal Services industry over the last five years. Propel Funeral Partners 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.
Propel Funeral Partners Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Propel Funeral Partners are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Propel Funeral Partners has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Personal Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Propel Funeral Partners to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Propel Funeral Partners to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Propel Funeral Partners to increase its market reach. Propel Funeral Partners 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Propel Funeral Partners 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Propel Funeral Partners 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Propel Funeral Partners can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Propel Funeral Partners operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Personal Services sector.
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. Propel Funeral Partners can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Propel Funeral Partners has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Personal Services industry. This can help Propel Funeral Partners to build a more holistic ecosystem for Propel Funeral Partners products in the Personal Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Personal Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Propel Funeral Partners 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. Propel Funeral Partners 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.
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 Propel Funeral Partners 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Personal Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Propel Funeral Partners can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Propel Funeral Partners 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
– Propel Funeral Partners can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Personal Services 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Propel Funeral Partners 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 Propel Funeral Partners to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Propel Funeral Partners External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Propel Funeral Partners are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Propel Funeral Partners 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 Personal Services industry.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Propel Funeral Partners has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Personal Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Propel Funeral Partners needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Personal 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Propel Funeral Partners may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Personal Services sector.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Propel Funeral Partners is facing in Personal Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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.
Increasing wage structure of Propel Funeral Partners
– 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 Propel Funeral Partners.
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. Propel Funeral Partners needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Personal Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Environmental challenges
– Propel Funeral Partners 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. Propel Funeral Partners can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Personal Services industry.
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. Propel Funeral Partners 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.
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 Propel Funeral Partners.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Propel Funeral Partners 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 Personal 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 Propel Funeral Partners in the Personal Services sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Propel Funeral Partners 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Propel Funeral Partners Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Propel Funeral Partners 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 Propel Funeral Partners 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 Propel Funeral Partners 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 Propel Funeral Partners 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 Propel Funeral Partners needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.