Travelers Cos. SWOT Analysis / Matrix

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SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Travelers Cos. managers to do a situational analysis of the organization . It is a useful technique to understand the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Travelers Cos. is facing in its current business environment.

The Travelers Cos. is one of the leading firms in its industry. Travelers Cos. maintains its dominant position in market by critically analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis an immensenly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the firm such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.

The SWOT Analysis framework helps an organization to identify the internal strategic factors such as -strengths and weaknesses, & external strategic factors such as - opportunities and threats. It leads to a 2X2 matrix – also called SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix enables the managers of the Travelers Cos. to develop four types of strategies:

SO (strengths-opportunities) Strategies
WO (weaknesses-opportunities) Strategies
ST (strengths-threats) Strategies
WT (weaknesses-threats) Strategies

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The central purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that an organization can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Travelers Cos. strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Travelers Cos. SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Travelers Cos. – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading firms in its industry, Travelers Cos. has numerous strengths that help it to thrive in the market place. These strengths not only help it to protect the market share in existing markets but also help in penetrating new markets. Based on Fern Fort University extensive research – some of the strengths of Travelers Cos. are –

Strong Free Cash Flow – Travelers Cos. has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
Successful track record of integrating complimentary firms through mergers & acquisition. It has successfully integrated number of technology companies in the past few years to streamline its operations and to build a reliable supply chain.
Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Travelers Cos. products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Travelers Cos. is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
Strong dealer community – It has built a culture among distributor & dealers where the dealers not only promote company’s products but also invest in training the sales team to explain to the customer how he/she can extract the maximum benefits out of the products.
Strong distribution network – Over the years Travelers Cos. has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
Superb Performance in New Markets – Travelers Cos. has built expertise at entering new markets and making success of them. The expansion has helped the organization to build new revenue stream and diversify the economic cycle risk in the markets it operates in.

Weakness of Travelers Cos. – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Travelers Cos. can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where an organization can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

Financial planning is not done properly and efficiently. The current asset ratio and liquid asset ratios suggest that the company can use the cash more efficiently than what it is doing at present.
Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Travelers Cos. has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
There are gaps in the product range sold by the company. This lack of choice can give a new competitor a foothold in the market.
Not very good at product demand forecasting leading to higher rate of missed opportunities compare to its competitors. One of the reason why the days inventory is high compare to its competitors is that Travelers Cos. is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
The marketing of the products left a lot to be desired. Even though the product is a success in terms of sale but its positioning and unique selling proposition is not clearly defined which can lead to the attacks in this segment from the competitors.
Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Travelers Cos. is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.

Opportunities for Travelers Cos. – External Strategic Factors

Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Travelers Cos..
New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Travelers Cos. . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Travelers Cos. products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Travelers Cos. to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
The new technology provides an opportunity to Travelers Cos. to practices differentiated pricing strategy in the new market. It will enable the firm to maintain its loyal customers with great service and lure new customers through other value oriented propositions.
New environmental policies – The new opportunities will create a level playing field for all the players in the industry. It represent a great opportunity for Travelers Cos. to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Travelers Cos. to capture new customers and increase its market share.
The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Travelers Cos. to increase its profitability.

Threats Travelers Cos. Facing - External Strategic Factors

New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .
Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Travelers Cos.
Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Travelers Cos. in those markets.
Liability laws in different countries are different and Travelers Cos. may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
The demand of the highly profitable products is seasonal in nature and any unlikely event during the peak season may impact the profitability of the company in short to medium term.
As the company is operating in numerous countries it is exposed to currency fluctuations especially given the volatile political climate in number of markets across the world.
Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Travelers Cos.

Although the SWOT analysis is widely used as a strategic planning tool, the analysis does have its share of limitations.

Certain capabilities or factors of an organization can be both a strength and weakness at the same time. This is one of the major limitations of SWOT analysis . For example changing environmental regulations can be both a threat to company it can also be an opportunity in a sense that it will enable the company to be on a level playing field or at advantage to competitors if it able to develop the products faster than the competitors.
SWOT does not show how to achieve a competitive advantage, so it must not be an end in itself.
The matrix is only a starting point for a discussion on how proposed strategies could be implemented. It provided an evaluation window but not an implementation plan based on strategic competitiveness of Travelers Cos.
SWOT is a static assessment - analysis of status quo with few prospective changes. As circumstances, capabilities, threats, and strategies change, the dynamics of a competitive environment may not be revealed in a single matrix.
SWOT analysis may lead the firm to overemphasize a single internal or external factor in formulating strategies. There are interrelationships among the key internal and external factors that SWOT does not reveal that may be important in devising strategies.

Weighted SWOT Analysis of Travelers Cos.

In light of the above mentioned limitations of the SWOT analysis / matrix, corporate managers decided to provide weightage to each internal strength and weakness of the firm. Organizations also assess the likelihood of events taking place in the coming future and how strong their impact could be on company's performance.

This method is called Weighted SWOT analysis. It is better than doing simplistic SWOT analysis because with Weighted SWOT Analysis Travelers Cos. managers can focus on the most critical factors and discount the non-important one. It also solves the long list problem where organizations ends up making a long list but none of the factors deemed too critical.

Limitation of Weighted SWOT analysis of Travelers Cos.

This approach also suffers from one major drawback - it focus on individual importance of factor rather than how they are collectively important and impact the business holistically.

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Example of Weighted SWOT Analysis

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SWOT Worksheet & Template

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References / Citations & Bibliography

M. E. Porter, Competitive Strategy(New York: Free Press, 1980)
A. D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962)
O. E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies(New York: Free Press, 1975);
L. Wrigley, Divisional Autonomy and Diversification (PhD, Harvard Business School, 1970)
R. E. White, Generic Business Strategies, Organizational Context and Performance: An Empirical Investigation, Strategic Management Journal7 (1986)