Safestore Holdings Plc SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

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

The Safestore Holdings Plc is one of the leading organizatations in its industry. Safestore Holdings Plc 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 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 helps the managers of the Safestore Holdings 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 core purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a company can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Safestore Holdings Plc strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Safestore Holdings Plc SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Safestore Holdings Plc – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading organizations in its industry, Safestore Holdings 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 Safestore Holdings Plc are –

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• Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
• Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Safestore Holdings 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.
• Superb Performance in New Markets – Safestore Holdings 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.
• Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Safestore Holdings Plc products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
• 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.
• Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.
• Strong Free Cash Flow – Safestore Holdings Plc has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
• 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.

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Weakness of Safestore Holdings Plc – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Safestore Holdings Plc 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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• Financial planning is not done properly and efficiently. The current asset ratio and liquid asset ratios suggest that the company can use the cash more efficiently than what it is doing at present.
• 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 Safestore Holdings Plc is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
• Limited success outside core business – Even though Safestore Holdings Plc is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
• The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Safestore Holdings Plc are below the industry average.
• High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Safestore Holdings Plc has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
• 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 Safestore Holdings Plc

Opportunities for Safestore Holdings Plc – External Strategic Factors

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• The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Safestore Holdings Plc to increase its profitability.
• 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 Safestore Holdings 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.
• Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of Safestore Holdings Plc products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
• Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Safestore Holdings Plc.
• 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.
• New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Safestore Holdings Plc . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
• Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Safestore Holdings Plc to capture new customers and increase its market share.
• Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Safestore Holdings Plc an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.

Threats Safestore Holdings Plc Facing - External Strategic Factors

• New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.
• Liability laws in different countries are different and Safestore Holdings Plc may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
• Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
• Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Safestore Holdings Plc profitability.
• 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.
• Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
• Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Safestore Holdings Plc’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
• 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.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Safestore Holdings 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 Safestore Holdings 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 Safestore Holdings 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 Safestore Holdings 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 Safestore Holdings 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

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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)