The Bank of New York Mellon SWOT Analysis / Matrix

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SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that can be used by The Bank of New York Mellon managers to do a situational analysis of the organization . It is a handy technique to analyze the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) The Bank of New York Mellon is facing in its current business environment.

The The Bank of New York Mellon is one of the leading firms in its industry. The Bank of New York Mellon maintains its prominent position in market by critically 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 enables 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 The Bank of New York Mellon 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 core purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that an organization can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect The Bank of New York Mellon strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to The Bank of New York Mellon SWOT Analysis

Strengths of The Bank of New York Mellon – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, The Bank of New York Mellon 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 The Bank of New York Mellon are –

• Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – The Bank of New York Mellon is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
• Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
• Strong distribution network – Over the years The Bank of New York Mellon has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
• Superb Performance in New Markets – The Bank of New York Mellon 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.
• 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.
• Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years The Bank of New York Mellon has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of The Bank of New York Mellon just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
• Strong Free Cash Flow – The Bank of New York Mellon has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
• Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to The Bank of New York Mellon products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.

Weakness of The Bank of New York Mellon – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where The Bank of New York Mellon can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a company can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

• Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
• The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of The Bank of New York Mellon 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 The Bank of New York Mellon is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
• Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though The Bank of New York Mellon 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. The Bank of New York Mellon has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
• 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.
• Days inventory is high compare to the competitors – making the company raise more capital to invest in the channel. This can impact the long term growth of The Bank of New York Mellon

Opportunities for The Bank of New York Mellon – External Strategic Factors

• 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 The Bank of New York Mellon. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable The Bank of New York Mellon to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of The Bank of New York Mellon.
• Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for The Bank of New York Mellon to capture new customers and increase its market share.
• Stable free cash flow provides opportunities to invest in adjacent product segments. With more cash in bank the company can invest in new technologies as well as in new products segments. This should open a window of opportunity for The Bank of New York Mellon in other product categories.
• 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.
• The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as The Bank of New York Mellon to increase its profitability.
• Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of The Bank of New York Mellon’s products thus providing an opportunity to the company - either to boost its profitability or pass on the benefits to the customers to gain market share.

Threats The Bank of New York Mellon Facing - External Strategic Factors

• Liability laws in different countries are different and The Bank of New York Mellon may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
• Intense competition – Stable profitability has increased the number of players in the industry over last two years which has put downward pressure on not only profitability but also on overall sales.
• Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
• Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of The Bank of New York Mellon
• New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.
• Rising raw material can pose a threat to the The Bank of New York Mellon profitability.
• 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 The Bank of New York Mellon

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 The Bank of New York Mellon
• 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 The Bank of New York Mellon

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 The Bank of New York Mellon 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 The Bank of New York Mellon

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)