CB Financial Services, Inc. SWOT Analysis / Matrix

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

The CB Financial Services, Inc. is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. CB Financial Services, Inc. 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 firm 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 called SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the CB Financial Services, 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 company can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect CB Financial Services, Inc. strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to CB Financial Services, Inc. SWOT Analysis

Strengths of CB Financial Services, Inc. – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading firms in its industry, CB Financial Services, 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 CB Financial Services, Inc. are –

Read - CB Financial Services, Inc. Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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• 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.
• Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
• Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. CB Financial Services, 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 Free Cash Flow – CB Financial Services, 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 – CB Financial Services, Inc. is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
• Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.
• 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.
• Superb Performance in New Markets – CB Financial Services, 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.

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Weakness of CB Financial Services, Inc. – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where CB Financial Services, 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.

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• 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.
• 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. CB Financial Services, Inc. has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
• Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
• The marketing of the products left a lot to be desired. Even though the product is a success in terms of sale but its positioning and unique selling proposition is not clearly defined which can lead to the attacks in this segment from the competitors.
• The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of CB Financial Services, Inc. are below the industry average.
• Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though CB Financial Services, 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.
• Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though CB Financial Services, Inc. is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.

Opportunities for CB Financial Services, Inc. – External Strategic Factors

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• Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of CB Financial Services, Inc..
• New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the CB Financial Services, Inc. . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided CB Financial Services, Inc. an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
• The new technology provides an opportunity to CB Financial Services, 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.
• 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 CB Financial Services, Inc. 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.
• 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 CB Financial Services, 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.
• Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of CB Financial Services, 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.

Threats CB Financial Services, Inc. Facing - External Strategic Factors

• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of CB Financial Services, Inc.
• The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.
• Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to CB Financial Services, Inc.’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for CB Financial Services, 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 CB Financial Services, 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 CB Financial Services, 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 CB Financial Services, 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 CB Financial Services, 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)