Flagship Investments Limited SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Flagship Investments Limited managers to do a situational analysis of the organization . It is an important technique to analyze the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Flagship Investments Limited is facing in its current business environment.

The Flagship Investments Limited is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Flagship Investments Limited 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 firm 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 known as SWOT Matrix.

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

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

Flagship Investments Limited swot analysis / matrix

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 Flagship Investments Limited strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Flagship Investments Limited SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Flagship Investments Limited – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading organizations in its industry, Flagship Investments 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 Flagship Investments Limited are –

Read - Flagship Investments Limited 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.
Strong Free Cash Flow – Flagship Investments Limited has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
Superb Performance in New Markets – Flagship Investments 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.
Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Flagship Investments Limited is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
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.
Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Flagship Investments 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.
Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Flagship Investments Limited has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Flagship Investments Limited just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.

Weakness of Flagship Investments Limited – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Flagship Investments Limited can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a firm can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

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Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Flagship Investments 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.
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 Flagship Investments Limited
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.
High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Flagship Investments Limited has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
Limited success outside core business – Even though Flagship Investments Limited is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Flagship Investments Limited is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
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. Flagship Investments Limited has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.

Opportunities for Flagship Investments Limited – External Strategic Factors

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The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Flagship Investments Limited to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
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 Flagship Investments Limited 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.
The new technology provides an opportunity to Flagship Investments Limited 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 Flagship Investments Limited in other product categories.
Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Flagship Investments Limited.
Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Flagship Investments Limited an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Flagship Investments Limited to capture new customers and increase its market share.

Threats Flagship Investments Limited Facing - External Strategic Factors

Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
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.
Liability laws in different countries are different and Flagship Investments Limited may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Flagship Investments Limited’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.
Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Flagship Investments Limited

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Flagship Investments 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 Flagship Investments 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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Flagship Investments 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 Flagship Investments 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 Flagship Investments 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.

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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)