Park Group Plc SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The Park Group Plc is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Park Group Plc 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 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 Park Group Plc 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 primary purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that an organization can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Park Group Plc strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Park Group Plc SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Park Group Plc – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading organizations in its industry, Park Group Plc 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 Park Group Plc are –

Read - Park Group Plc Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.
Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Park Group Plc 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.
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 distribution network – Over the years Park Group Plc has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
Superb Performance in New Markets – Park Group Plc 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.
Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Park Group Plc 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 Park Group Plc has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Park Group Plc just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.

Weakness of Park Group Plc – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Park Group Plc can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where an organization 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 Park Group Plc 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. Park Group Plc has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
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 Park Group Plc
The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Park Group Plc are below the industry average.
Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Park Group Plc is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Park Group Plc 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 Park Group Plc – External Strategic Factors

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Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Park Group Plc.
Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Park Group Plc an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Park Group Plc . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
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 Park Group Plc. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
The new technology provides an opportunity to Park Group Plc 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.
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.
Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Park Group Plc to capture new customers and increase its market share.
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 Park Group Plc in other product categories.

Threats Park Group Plc Facing - External Strategic Factors

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.
Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.
New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .
Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Park Group Plc
Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Park Group Plc profitability.
Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for Park Group Plc 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 Park Group Plc

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 Park Group Plc
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 Park Group Plc

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 Park Group Plc 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 Park Group Plc

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)