Citizens Financial Group, Inc. SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that can be used by Citizens Financial Group, Inc. managers to do a situational analysis of the firm . It is a useful technique to map out the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is facing in its current business environment.

The Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Citizens Financial Group, Inc. maintains its prominent 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 company such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.


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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 known as SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the Citizens Financial Group, Inc. 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 main purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Citizens Financial Group, Inc. strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Citizens Financial Group, Inc. SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Citizens Financial Group, Inc. – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading organizations in its industry, Citizens Financial Group, Inc. 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 Citizens Financial Group, Inc. are –

Read - Citizens Financial Group, Inc. Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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• Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Citizens Financial Group, Inc. 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.
• Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Citizens Financial Group, Inc. products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
• Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
• Strong Free Cash Flow – Citizens Financial Group, Inc. has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
• Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Citizens Financial Group, Inc. 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 Brand Portfolio – Over the years Citizens Financial Group, Inc. has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Citizens Financial Group, Inc. just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
• 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.

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Weakness of Citizens Financial Group, Inc. – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Citizens Financial Group, Inc. can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a firm can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

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• 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 Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
• 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 Citizens Financial Group, Inc.
• Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
• Limited success outside core business – Even though Citizens Financial Group, Inc. is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
• High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Citizens Financial Group, Inc. has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
• 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. Citizens Financial Group, Inc. has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
• Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Citizens Financial Group, Inc. 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.

Opportunities for Citizens Financial Group, Inc. – External Strategic Factors

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• 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 Citizens Financial Group, Inc. to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Citizens Financial Group, Inc. an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
• Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Citizens Financial Group, Inc. products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
• Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Citizens Financial Group, Inc. to capture new customers and increase its market share.
• New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Citizens Financial Group, Inc. . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
• 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 Citizens Financial Group, Inc. in other product categories.
• The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Citizens Financial Group, Inc. to increase its profitability.
• 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 Citizens Financial Group, Inc.. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.

Threats Citizens Financial Group, Inc. Facing - External Strategic Factors

• The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.
• Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Citizens Financial Group, Inc. profitability.
• Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
• Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Citizens Financial Group, Inc.
• 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.
• Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Citizens Financial Group, Inc.’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Citizens Financial Group, Inc.

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 Citizens Financial Group, Inc.
• 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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Citizens Financial Group, Inc.

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 Citizens Financial Group, Inc. 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 Citizens Financial Group, Inc.

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

If you like to do your own SWOT analysis or want to make your own Weighted SWOT SWOT matrix then feel free to download Fern Fort University SWOT Analysis Template.

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)