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Shinhan Financial Group SWOT Analysis / Matrix
Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers
SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Shinhan Financial Group managers to do a situational analysis of the company . It is an important technique to evalauate the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Shinhan Financial Group is facing in its current business environment.
The Shinhan Financial Group is one of the leading companies in its industry. Shinhan Financial Group maintains its dominant position in market by carefully analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis a highly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the organization such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.
The SWOT Analysis framework facilitates 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 known as SWOT Matrix.
The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix enables the managers of the Shinhan Financial Group 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 a firm can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Shinhan Financial Group strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.
Step by Step Guide to Shinhan Financial Group SWOT Analysis
Strengths of Shinhan Financial Group – Internal Strategic Factors
As one of the leading firms in its industry, Shinhan Financial Group has numerous strengths that enable 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 Shinhan Financial Group are –
- High level of customer satisfaction – the company with its dedicated customer relationship management department has able to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction among present customers and good brand equity among the potential customers.
- 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.
- Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
- Superb Performance in New Markets – Shinhan Financial Group 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.
- Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Shinhan Financial Group has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Shinhan Financial Group just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
- Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Shinhan Financial Group is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
- 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.
- Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Shinhan Financial Group is investing huge resources in training and development of its employees resulting in a workforce that is not only highly skilled but also motivated to achieve more.
Weakness of Shinhan Financial Group – Internal Strategic Factors
Weakness are the areas where Shinhan Financial Group 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.
- Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Shinhan Financial Group is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
- The company has not being able to tackle the challenges present by the new entrants in the segment and has lost small market share in the niche categories. Shinhan Financial Group has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
- High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Shinhan Financial Group has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
- The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Shinhan Financial Group are below the industry average.
- 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 Shinhan Financial Group is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
- Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Shinhan Financial Group is spending above the industry average on Research and Development, it has not been able to compete with the leading players in the industry in terms of innovation. It has come across as a mature firm looking forward to bring out products based on tested features in the market.
- Limited success outside core business – Even though Shinhan Financial Group is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
Opportunities for Shinhan Financial Group – External Strategic Factors
- Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Shinhan Financial Group products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
- Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Shinhan Financial Group.
- Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Shinhan Financial Group an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
- The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Shinhan Financial Group to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
- 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 Shinhan Financial Group 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 Shinhan Financial Group to capture new customers and increase its market share.
- New customers from online channel – Over the past few years the company has invested vast sum of money into the online platform. This investment has opened new sales channel for Shinhan Financial Group. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
- Organization’s core competencies can be a success in similar other products field. A comparative example could be - GE healthcare research helped it in developing better Oil drilling machines.
Threats Shinhan Financial Group Facing - External Strategic Factors
- Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
- Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Shinhan Financial Group profitability.
- New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .
- Liability laws in different countries are different and Shinhan Financial Group may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
- Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Shinhan Financial Group in those markets.
- No regular supply of innovative products – Over the years the company has developed numerous products but those are often response to the development by other players. Secondly the supply of new products is not regular thus leading to high and low swings in the sales number over period of time.
- Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Shinhan Financial Group’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
- 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.
Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Shinhan Financial Group
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 Shinhan Financial Group
- 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 Shinhan Financial Group
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 Shinhan Financial Group 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 Shinhan Financial Group
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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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)