Rural Funds Group SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The Rural Funds Group is one of the leading firms in its industry. Rural Funds Group maintains its prominent position in market by critically analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis an immensenly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the organization 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 called SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the Rural Funds Group to develop four types of strategies:

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

Rural Funds Group swot analysis / matrix

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The central purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a company can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Rural Funds Group strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Rural Funds Group SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Rural Funds Group – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading organizations in its industry, Rural Funds Group 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 Rural Funds Group are –

Read - Rural Funds Group Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Rural Funds Group products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Rural Funds Group has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Rural Funds Group just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.
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.
Strong Free Cash Flow – Rural Funds Group has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Rural Funds 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.

Weakness of Rural Funds Group – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Rural Funds Group 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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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 Rural Funds Group is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Rural Funds 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.
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 Rural Funds Group
Limited success outside core business – Even though Rural Funds Group 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 Rural Funds 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 Rural Funds Group are below the industry average.
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.

Opportunities for Rural Funds Group – External Strategic Factors

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Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Rural Funds Group products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
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 Rural Funds 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.
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 Rural Funds Group an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
The new technology provides an opportunity to Rural Funds Group 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.
The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Rural Funds Group to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Rural Funds Group.
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 Rural Funds Group in other product categories.

Threats Rural Funds 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.
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.
Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Rural Funds Group’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.
Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Rural Funds Group profitability.
Liability laws in different countries are different and Rural Funds Group may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies 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.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Rural Funds 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 Rural Funds 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 Rural Funds 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 Rural Funds 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 Rural Funds 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

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)