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SVB Financial Group SWOT Analysis / Matrix
Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers
SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that can be used by SVB Financial Group managers to do a situational analysis of the company . It is an important technique to evalauate the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) SVB Financial Group is facing in its current business environment.
The SVB Financial Group is one of the leading companies in its industry. SVB Financial Group maintains its dominant 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 company such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.
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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 known as SWOT Matrix.
The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the SVB Financial Group 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 a company can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect SVB Financial Group strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.
Step by Step Guide to SVB Financial Group SWOT Analysis
Strengths of SVB Financial Group – Internal Strategic Factors
As one of the leading organizations in its industry, SVB Financial Group 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 SVB Financial Group are –
Read - SVB Financial Group Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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- 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.
- Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. SVB Financial Group 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.
- Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.
- Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
- Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years SVB Financial Group has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of SVB Financial Group just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
- Superb Performance in New Markets – SVB Financial Group 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.
- Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to SVB Financial Group products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the 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 SVB Financial Group – Internal Strategic Factors
Weakness are the areas where SVB Financial Group can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where an organization can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.
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- 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.
- Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, SVB Financial Group 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.
- Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though SVB Financial Group is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
- The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of SVB Financial Group are below the industry average.
- 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 SVB Financial Group
- 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 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. SVB Financial Group has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
Opportunities for SVB Financial Group – External Strategic Factors
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- The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable SVB Financial Group to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
- 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 SVB Financial Group in other product categories.
- New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the SVB Financial Group . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
- Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of SVB Financial Group products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
- 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.
- Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided SVB Financial Group an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
- 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 SVB Financial Group. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
- 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 SVB Financial Group to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
Threats SVB Financial Group Facing - External Strategic Factors
- Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
- The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.
- Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for SVB Financial Group 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.
- 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.
- Rising raw material can pose a threat to the SVB Financial Group profitability.
- Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
- 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.
Limitations of SWOT Analysis for SVB Financial Group
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 SVB Financial Group
- 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 SVB Financial Group
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 SVB Financial Group 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 SVB Financial Group
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
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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)
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