Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. managers to do a situational analysis of the firm . It is a handy technique to understand the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. is facing in its current business environment.

The Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. 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.


Order Now - Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. SWOT Analysis
Check out- Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. PESTEL / PEST & Environment Analysis
Article continues after advertisement


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 called SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the Beneficial Bancorp, 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 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 Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading firms in its industry, Beneficial Bancorp, 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 Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. are –

Read - Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
Article continues after advertisement

• Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Beneficial Bancorp, 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.
• Strong distribution network – Over the years Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
• Superb Performance in New Markets – Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. 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 developing new products – product innovation.
• 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.
• Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
• Strong Free Cash Flow – Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
• 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.

---

Weakness of Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. 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.

Article continues after advertisement

• The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. are below the industry average.
• Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. 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.
• Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Beneficial Bancorp, 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.
• Limited success outside core business – Even though Beneficial Bancorp, 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 Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
• 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 Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
• 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 Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. – External Strategic Factors

Article continues after advertisement

• New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
• Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of Beneficial Bancorp, Inc.’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.
• Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. to capture new customers and increase its market share.
• Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Beneficial Bancorp, Inc..
• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• The new technology provides an opportunity to Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. 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.
• 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 Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
• 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 Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. Facing - External Strategic Factors

• Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Beneficial Bancorp, Inc.   in those markets.
• 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.
• 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 Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. profitability.
• Liability laws in different countries are different and Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
• New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.
• 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.
• 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.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Beneficial Bancorp, 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 Beneficial Bancorp, 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.

Article continues after advertisement

Weighted SWOT Analysis of Beneficial Bancorp, 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 Beneficial Bancorp, 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 Beneficial Bancorp, 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.

Buy Custom Essay and Term Paper on SWOT Analysis / Matrix , Weighted SWOT Analysis of Beneficial Bancorp, Inc.

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)