Wintrust Financial Corporation SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The Wintrust Financial Corporation is one of the leading firms in its industry. Wintrust Financial Corporation 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 company 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 known as SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix enables the managers of the Wintrust Financial Corporation to develop four types of strategies:

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

Wintrust Financial Corporation swot analysis / matrix

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The main purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Wintrust Financial Corporation strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Wintrust Financial Corporation SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Wintrust Financial Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading firms in its industry, Wintrust Financial Corporation 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 Wintrust Financial Corporation are –

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

Weakness of Wintrust Financial Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Wintrust 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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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 Wintrust Financial Corporation 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 Wintrust Financial Corporation is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Wintrust Financial Corporation has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
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 Wintrust Financial Corporation
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. Wintrust Financial Corporation has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
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.

Opportunities for Wintrust Financial Corporation – External Strategic Factors

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Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of Wintrust Financial Corporation’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.
The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Wintrust Financial Corporation 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 Wintrust Financial Corporation.
The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Wintrust Financial Corporation to increase its profitability.
New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Wintrust Financial Corporation . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Wintrust Financial Corporation 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 Wintrust Financial Corporation in other product categories.
Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Wintrust Financial Corporation products by the state as well as federal government contractors.

Threats Wintrust 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.
Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Wintrust Financial Corporation’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
Liability laws in different countries are different and Wintrust Financial Corporation 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 Wintrust Financial Corporation in those markets.
Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Wintrust Financial Corporation
Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
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.
New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Wintrust 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 Wintrust 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 Wintrust 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 Wintrust 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 Wintrust 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)