Hunter Hall (PCG) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Investment Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Hunter Hall (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Hunter Hall is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing commodity prices, technology disruption, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing energy prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Hunter Hall can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Hunter Hall, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Hunter Hall 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 Hunter Hall can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Hunter Hall
2. Improving business portfolio management of Hunter Hall
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Investment Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Hunter Hall
Strengths of Hunter Hall | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Hunter Hall are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Investment Services industry
– Hunter Hall has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Hunter Hall to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Investment Services industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Hunter Hall to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Organizational Resilience of Hunter Hall
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Hunter Hall does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to lead change in Investment Services
– Hunter Hall is one of the leading players in the Investment Services industry in Australia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Investment Services industry in Australia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Hunter Hall in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Analytics focus
– Hunter Hall 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 Investment 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Hunter Hall is one of the leading players in the Investment 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Hunter Hall has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Investment Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Hunter Hall have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Hunter Hall in Investment Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Hunter Hall has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Hunter Hall 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.
Digital Transformation in Investment Services industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Hunter Hall digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Hunter Hall 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.
Learning organization
- Hunter Hall 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 Hunter Hall is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Hunter Hall emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Hunter Hall in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Hunter Hall has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Hunter Hall to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– Hunter Hall is one of the most innovative firm in Investment Services sector.
Weaknesses of Hunter Hall | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Hunter Hall are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Hunter Hall needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Investment Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Hunter Hall can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Hunter Hall is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Investment Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Australia, Hunter Hall 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 Investment Services industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Hunter Hall 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 Investment Services industry using digital technology.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Hunter Hall supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Hunter Hall is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Hunter Hall vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– Hunter Hall 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.
High dependence on Hunter Hall ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Hunter Hall still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Investment Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Hunter Hall has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Hunter Hall has high operating costs in the Investment Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Hunter Hall lucrative customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Hunter Hall is one of the leading players in the Investment Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Investment Services industry in last five years.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Hunter Hall, in the dynamic environment of Investment Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Hunter Hall has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Skills based hiring in Investment Services industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Hunter Hall 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Australia, Hunter Hall needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Hunter Hall Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Hunter Hall are -
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Hunter Hall in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Investment Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Investment Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Hunter Hall 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. Hunter Hall 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Hunter Hall can develop new processes and procedures in Investment Services 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Hunter Hall 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 Investment Services industry.
Buying journey improvements
– Hunter Hall can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Investment 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Hunter Hall 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Hunter Hall 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.
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 Hunter Hall 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Hunter Hall to increase its market reach. Hunter Hall 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Hunter Hall 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 Hunter Hall to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Hunter Hall has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Investment Services sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Hunter Hall to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Hunter Hall to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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. Hunter Hall can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Manufacturing automation
– Hunter Hall can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Investment 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.
Threats Hunter Hall External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Hunter Hall are -
Regulatory challenges
– Hunter Hall 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 Investment Services industry regulations.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Hunter Hall 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.
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 Hunter Hall.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Hunter Hall may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Investment Services sector.
Environmental challenges
– Hunter Hall 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. Hunter Hall can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Investment Services industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Investment Services industry are lowering. It can presents Hunter Hall with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Investment Services sector.
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 Hunter Hall business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Hunter Hall 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 Hunter Hall prominent markets.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Hunter Hall has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Investment Services industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Hunter Hall needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Investment 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.
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.
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. Hunter Hall 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Hunter Hall in Investment Services industry. The Investment 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Hunter Hall is facing in Investment Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Hunter Hall Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Hunter Hall 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 Hunter Hall 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 Hunter Hall 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 Hunter Hall 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 Hunter Hall needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
