SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Swiss Fintec Invest (France)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Swiss Fintec Invest is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing energy prices, technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
increasing commodity prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Swiss Fintec Invest
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Swiss Fintec Invest can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Swiss Fintec Invest, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Swiss Fintec Invest 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 Swiss Fintec Invest can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Swiss Fintec Invest
2. Improving business portfolio management of Swiss Fintec Invest
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in France
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Swiss Fintec Invest
Strengths of Swiss Fintec Invest | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Swiss Fintec Invest are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Swiss Fintec Invest has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Swiss Fintec Invest staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– Swiss Fintec Invest has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Swiss Fintec Invest to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Swiss Fintec Invest to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High brand equity
– Swiss Fintec Invest has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Swiss Fintec Invest to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Swiss Fintec Invest in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Swiss Fintec Invest is one of the leading players in the industry in France. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in France. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Swiss Fintec Invest in the sector have low bargaining power. Swiss Fintec Invest has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Swiss Fintec Invest to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Ability to lead change in
– Swiss Fintec Invest is one of the leading players in the industry in France. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the industry in France but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Swiss Fintec Invest in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– Swiss Fintec Invest is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Swiss Fintec Invest digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Weaknesses of Swiss Fintec Invest | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Swiss Fintec Invest are -
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Swiss Fintec Invest is one of the leading players in the industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Swiss Fintec Invest, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Swiss Fintec Invest has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Swiss Fintec Invest has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
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 Swiss Fintec Invest supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Swiss Fintec Invest is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Swiss Fintec Invest vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Swiss Fintec Invest has high operating costs in the industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Swiss Fintec Invest lucrative customers.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Swiss Fintec Invest is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Swiss Fintec Invest 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 France, Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Swiss Fintec Invest, 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Swiss Fintec Invest products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Swiss Fintec Invest needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of France, Swiss Fintec Invest needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Swiss Fintec Invest Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Swiss Fintec Invest are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Swiss Fintec Invest can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Swiss Fintec Invest is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
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. Swiss Fintec Invest 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. Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Swiss Fintec Invest 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 Swiss Fintec Invest to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Swiss Fintec Invest 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
– Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Swiss Fintec Invest 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 Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Swiss Fintec Invest can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Swiss Fintec Invest operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Threats Swiss Fintec Invest External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Swiss Fintec Invest are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
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 Swiss Fintec Invest.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Swiss Fintec Invest with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
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 Swiss Fintec Invest business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Swiss Fintec Invest
– 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 Swiss Fintec Invest.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Swiss Fintec Invest 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Swiss Fintec Invest has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Swiss Fintec Invest needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the 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.
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 Swiss Fintec Invest in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Swiss Fintec Invest is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Swiss Fintec Invest 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. Swiss Fintec Invest can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Swiss Fintec Invest Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Swiss Fintec Invest 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 Swiss Fintec Invest 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 Swiss Fintec Invest 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 Swiss Fintec Invest 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 Swiss Fintec Invest needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.