Scottish American Investment Co. Plc SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Scottish American Investment Co. Plc 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) Scottish American Investment Co. Plc is facing in its current business environment.

The Scottish American Investment Co. Plc is one of the leading firms in its industry. Scottish American Investment Co. Plc maintains its prominent position in market by carefully analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis.  SWOT analysis an immensenly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the firm 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 known as SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix helps the managers of the Scottish American Investment Co. 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 firm can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Scottish American Investment Co. Plc strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Scottish American Investment Co. Plc SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Scottish American Investment Co. Plc – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading firms in its industry, Scottish American Investment Co. Plc has numerous strengths that enable 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 Scottish American Investment Co. Plc are –

Read - Scottish American Investment Co. Plc Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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• Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Scottish American Investment Co. 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.
• 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 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.
• 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.
• Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Scottish American Investment Co. Plc products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
• Strong distribution network – Over the years Scottish American Investment Co. Plc has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
• 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.

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Weakness of Scottish American Investment Co. Plc – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Scottish American Investment Co. 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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• Limited success outside core business – Even though Scottish American Investment Co. Plc is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
• 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.
• Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Scottish American Investment Co. Plc 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.
• Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
• 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.
• 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 Scottish American Investment Co. Plc
• The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of Scottish American Investment Co. Plc are below the industry average.

Opportunities for Scottish American Investment Co. Plc – External Strategic Factors

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• Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of Scottish American Investment Co. Plc’s products thus providing an opportunity to the company - either to boost its profitability or pass on the benefits to the customers to gain market share.
• The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Scottish American Investment Co. Plc to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
• 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 Scottish American Investment Co. Plc an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
• The new technology provides an opportunity to Scottish American Investment Co. 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.
• The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Scottish American Investment Co. Plc to increase its profitability.
• Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of Scottish American Investment Co. Plc.
• 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 Scottish American Investment Co. 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.

Threats Scottish American Investment Co. Plc Facing - External Strategic Factors

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .
• Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
• Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Scottish American Investment Co. Plc’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
• Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Scottish American Investment Co. 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 Scottish American Investment Co. 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 Scottish American Investment Co. 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 Scottish American Investment Co. 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 Scottish American Investment Co. 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)