Bank of Marin Bancorp SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The Bank of Marin Bancorp is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Bank of Marin Bancorp 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 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 enables the managers of the Bank of Marin Bancorp 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 primary purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that an organization can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Bank of Marin Bancorp strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Bank of Marin Bancorp SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Bank of Marin Bancorp – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, Bank of Marin Bancorp 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 Bank of Marin Bancorp are –

Read - Bank of Marin Bancorp Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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• Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Bank of Marin Bancorp 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.
• Superb Performance in New Markets – Bank of Marin Bancorp 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 Bank of Marin Bancorp has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Bank of Marin Bancorp 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.
• Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Bank of Marin Bancorp 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.
• 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.

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Weakness of Bank of Marin Bancorp – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Bank of Marin Bancorp 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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• 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. Bank of Marin Bancorp has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
• 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 Bank of Marin Bancorp is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
• Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Bank of Marin Bancorp 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.
• Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
• Limited success outside core business – Even though Bank of Marin Bancorp is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
• 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.
• Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Bank of Marin Bancorp 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.

Opportunities for Bank of Marin Bancorp – External Strategic Factors

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• 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.
• Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Bank of Marin Bancorp to capture new customers and increase its market share.
• 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 Bank of Marin Bancorp to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
• The new technology provides an opportunity to Bank of Marin Bancorp 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.
• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Bank of Marin Bancorp to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• 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 Bank of Marin Bancorp. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
• The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Bank of Marin Bancorp to increase its profitability.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Bank of Marin Bancorp an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.

Threats Bank of Marin Bancorp Facing - External Strategic Factors

• Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Bank of Marin Bancorp   in those markets.
• Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Bank of Marin Bancorp profitability.
• 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.
• Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Bank of Marin Bancorp
• 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 Bank of Marin Bancorp

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 Bank of Marin Bancorp
• 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 Bank of Marin Bancorp

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 Bank of Marin Bancorp 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 Bank of Marin Bancorp

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)