Trustees Australia Limited SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The Trustees Australia Limited is one of the leading firms in its industry. Trustees Australia Limited maintains its dominant position in market by carefully analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis a highly 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 - Trustees Australia Limited SWOT Analysis
Check out- Trustees Australia Limited 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 known as SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the Trustees Australia Limited to develop four types of strategies:

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

Trustees Australia Limited swot analysis / matrix

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The primary purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Trustees Australia Limited strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Trustees Australia Limited SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Trustees Australia Limited – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, Trustees Australia Limited 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 Trustees Australia Limited are –

Read - Trustees Australia Limited Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
Article continues after advertisement

Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Trustees Australia Limited products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Trustees Australia Limited is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Trustees Australia Limited has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Trustees Australia Limited just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
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.
Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
Superb Performance in New Markets – Trustees Australia Limited 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 skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Trustees Australia Limited 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.

Weakness of Trustees Australia Limited – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Trustees Australia Limited 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

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 Trustees Australia Limited 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 Trustees Australia Limited 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 Trustees Australia Limited is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Trustees Australia Limited 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.
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.
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.
High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Trustees Australia Limited has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.

Opportunities for Trustees Australia Limited – External Strategic Factors

Article continues after advertisement

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 Trustees Australia Limited in other product categories.
Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Trustees Australia Limited an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Trustees Australia Limited . 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 Trustees Australia Limited 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 Trustees Australia Limited.
The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Trustees Australia Limited to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of Trustees Australia Limited’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.
Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Trustees Australia Limited products by the state as well as federal government contractors.

Threats Trustees Australia Limited Facing - External Strategic Factors

Liability laws in different countries are different and Trustees Australia Limited may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .
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.
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.
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.
Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Trustees Australia Limited in those markets.
Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Trustees Australia Limited’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Trustees Australia Limited

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 Trustees Australia Limited
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 Trustees Australia Limited

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 Trustees Australia Limited 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 Trustees Australia Limited

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 Trustees Australia Limited

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)