The Community Financial Corporation SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The The Community Financial Corporation is one of the leading companies in its industry. The Community Financial Corporation maintains its prominent position in market by carefully analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis an immensenly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the organization such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.

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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 helps the managers of the The Community Financial Corporation to develop four types of strategies:

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

The Community Financial Corporation swot analysis / matrix

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 The Community Financial Corporation strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to The Community Financial Corporation SWOT Analysis

Strengths of The Community Financial Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading organizations in its industry, The Community Financial Corporation 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 The Community Financial Corporation are –

Read - The Community Financial Corporation Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – The Community Financial Corporation is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to The Community Financial Corporation products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
Superb Performance in New Markets – The Community Financial Corporation 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.
Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years The Community Financial Corporation has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of The Community Financial Corporation 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.
Strong distribution network – Over the years The Community Financial Corporation has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
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.

Weakness of The Community Financial Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where The Community Financial Corporation 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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Limited success outside core business – Even though The Community Financial Corporation is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, The Community Financial Corporation needs to put more money in technology to integrate the processes across the board. Right now the investment in technologies is not at par with the vision of the company.
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.
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.
Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though The Community Financial Corporation 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.
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 Community Financial Corporation has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of The Community Financial Corporation are below the industry average.

Opportunities for The Community Financial Corporation – External Strategic Factors

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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 Community Financial Corporation in other product categories.
Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided The Community Financial Corporation an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of The Community Financial Corporation.
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 The Community Financial Corporation to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the The Community Financial Corporation . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
The new technology provides an opportunity to The Community Financial Corporation 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.
Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of The Community Financial Corporation products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable The Community Financial Corporation to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.

Threats The Community Financial Corporation Facing - External Strategic Factors

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.
Rising raw material can pose a threat to the The Community Financial Corporation 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 The Community Financial Corporation may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.
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 The Community Financial Corporation

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 Community Financial Corporation
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 The Community Financial Corporation

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 Community Financial Corporation 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 Community Financial Corporation

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

You can email us to get an example document of Weighted SWOT analysis.

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)