St Barbara Limited SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The St Barbara Limited is one of the leading firms in its industry. St Barbara Limited maintains its prominent 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 company 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 enables the managers of the St Barbara Limited 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 an organization can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect St Barbara Limited strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to St Barbara Limited SWOT Analysis

Strengths of St Barbara Limited – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading firms in its industry, St Barbara 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 St Barbara Limited are –

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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.
• Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years St Barbara Limited has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of St Barbara Limited just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
• Strong Free Cash Flow – St Barbara Limited has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
• Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
• Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
• Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to St Barbara 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 – St Barbara Limited is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
• Strong distribution network – Over the years St Barbara Limited has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.

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Weakness of St Barbara Limited – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where St Barbara 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.

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• The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of St Barbara Limited are below the industry average.
• Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, St Barbara 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.
• High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry St Barbara Limited has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
• 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 St Barbara Limited is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
• 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.
• Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though St Barbara 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.
• 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. St Barbara Limited has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.

Opportunities for St Barbara Limited – External Strategic Factors

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• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable St Barbara Limited to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided St Barbara Limited an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
• Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of St Barbara Limited.
• Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for St Barbara Limited 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 St Barbara Limited to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
• 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 St Barbara Limited. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
• 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 St Barbara 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.

Threats St Barbara Limited Facing - External Strategic Factors

• Liability laws in different countries are different and St Barbara Limited may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
• 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.
• Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
• Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
• 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.
• New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .
• Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to St Barbara Limited’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
• Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of St Barbara Limited

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for St Barbara 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 St Barbara 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 St Barbara 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 St Barbara 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 St Barbara 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

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)