Driver Australia Four Trust SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Driver Australia Four Trust managers to do a situational analysis of the organization . It is a handy technique to evalauate the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Driver Australia Four Trust is facing in its current business environment.

The Driver Australia Four Trust is one of the leading companies in its industry. Driver Australia Four Trust 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 firm such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.

Order Now - Driver Australia Four Trust SWOT Analysis
Check out- Driver Australia Four Trust 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 called SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix enables the managers of the Driver Australia Four Trust to develop four types of strategies:

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

Driver Australia Four Trust swot analysis / matrix

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The central purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Driver Australia Four Trust strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Driver Australia Four Trust SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Driver Australia Four Trust – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading firms in its industry, Driver Australia Four Trust 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 Driver Australia Four Trust are –

Read - Driver Australia Four Trust Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
Article continues after advertisement

Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Driver Australia Four Trust products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
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 Driver Australia Four Trust has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Driver Australia Four Trust just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
Strong distribution network – Over the years Driver Australia Four Trust has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Driver Australia Four Trust 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.
Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
Superb Performance in New Markets – Driver Australia Four Trust 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.

Weakness of Driver Australia Four Trust – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Driver Australia Four Trust 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.

Article continues after advertisement

Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Driver Australia Four Trust 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.
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 Driver Australia Four Trust
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 Driver Australia Four Trust 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. Driver Australia Four Trust has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Driver Australia Four Trust are below the industry average.
Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Driver Australia Four Trust is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.

Opportunities for Driver Australia Four Trust – External Strategic Factors

Article continues after advertisement

Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Driver Australia Four Trust an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
The new technology provides an opportunity to Driver Australia Four Trust 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.
Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Driver Australia Four Trust to capture new customers and increase its market share.
Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Driver Australia Four Trust products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Driver Australia Four Trust to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Driver Australia Four Trust to increase its profitability.
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 Driver Australia Four Trust to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Driver Australia Four Trust . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.

Threats Driver Australia Four Trust 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.
Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Driver Australia Four Trust
New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.
Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
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.
Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Driver Australia Four Trust in those markets.
Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Driver Australia Four Trust profitability.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Driver Australia Four Trust

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 Driver Australia Four Trust
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 Driver Australia Four Trust

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 Driver Australia Four Trust 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 Driver Australia Four Trust

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 Driver Australia Four Trust

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)