There are a few words and phrases associated with slots that you may not be immediately familiar with. Some of them are fairly self-explanatory, but some require an explanation. If you are going to be playing slot games, then it’s well worth being aware of these terms, as you are likely to come across them at some point. A SWOT Analysis is one of the most commonly used tools to assess the internal and external environments of a company and is part of a company’s strategic planning process Corporate Strategy Corporate Strategy focuses on how to manage resources, risk and return across a firm, as opposed to looking at competitive advantages in business strategy.
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SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Casino 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) Casino is facing in its current business environment.
The Casino is one of the leading firms in its industry. Casino maintains its dominant 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 company such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.
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 enables the managers of the Casino 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 main purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that an organization can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Casino strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.
Step by Step Guide to Casino SWOT Analysis
Strengths of Casino – Internal Strategic Factors
As one of the leading organizations in its industry, Casino 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 Casino are –
- Strong distribution network – Over the years Casino has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
- Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Casino is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
- Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Casino products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
- Strong Free Cash Flow – Casino has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
- Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
- Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Casino 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.
- 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.
- Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Casino has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Casino just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
Weakness of Casino – Internal Strategic Factors
Weakness are the areas where Casino 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.
- High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Casino has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
- 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. Casino has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
- 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.
- Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Casino 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.
- 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 Casino 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 Casino is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
- Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Casino 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.
Opportunities for Casino – External Strategic Factors
- 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 Casino. 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 market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Casino to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
- Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for Casino to capture new customers and increase its market share.
- The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Casino 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 Casino.
- The new technology provides an opportunity to Casino 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.
- Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of Casino’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.
- 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 Casino in other product categories.
Threats Casino Facing - External Strategic Factors
- Liability laws in different countries are different and Casino may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
- Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of Casino
- 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.
- 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.
- Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Casino profitability.
- 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.
Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Casino
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 Casino
- 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Casino
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 Casino 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 Casino
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)
At any point during your career as a nurse, doing a SWOT analysis of your nursing career trajectory is both smart and prudent.
A SWOT analysis is a popular tool that allows you to take a deep dive into what makes you tick and how you perceive yourself. While this tool is generally used in the business world, it can actually be applied to any aspect of your life, including relationships, parenting, or education.
What is a SWOT Analysis?
A SWOT Analysis consists of four parts:
- S: Strengths
- W: Weaknesses
- O: Opportunities
- T: Threats
When you sit down to perform a SWOT Analysis of your nursing career, you’re going to be digging as far as you can for answers that may bring up even more questions, or perhaps provide some answers.
No tool can exclusively get you where you want to go, but a SWOT analysis is a great place to begin in pursuit of honesty and clarity about where to head next.
S = Start With Your Strengths
It’s always good to begin on the positive side in order to bolster your self-confidence before journeying into the more challenging aspects of the analysis.
In terms of your strengths, consider the manual nursing tasks and skills that you excel at.
Next, examine your so-called ‘soft skills‘, such as communication, emotional intelligence, and relational intelligence.
Strengths may also come in the form of personal characteristics, such as kindness, thoughtfulness, or compassion.
Your personal experiences are also important in this context. For example, if you yourself have survived cancer and you work in oncology, this can be seen as a significant strength in terms of your ability to empathise with your patients.
If you’re having trouble coming up with more than just a few strengths, ask a trusted colleague or friend to tell you what they perceive your strengths to be. You may be pleasantly surprised by their answers.
W = Examine Your Weaknesses
As a healthcare professional, the skills that are not so easy for you to perform would be obvious weaknesses.
Having said that, if the skills you’re not proficient at aren’t required for your current job, this may only become a weakness if you apply for a position for which those skills are crucial.
Your personality may be the source of some of your weaknesses, such as poor personal boundaries, difficulty separating your own feelings from your work, addiction, and so on.
Slot Analysis Terms
Your weaknesses may stem from the fact that the work you’re currently doing goes against your natural style.
For example, you may thrive on one-to-one interactions, but your current position places you in situations where you have very little face time with patients. Or conversely, you may thrive in groups and do poorly on your own. In this way, the autonomy of home care may be great for one nurse, and an absolute nightmare for another.
Finally, make sure to also assess your personal life for weak areas.
Are you practising good self-care? Do you get enough sleep? Are your family relationships turbulent and chaotic?
What happens outside of work can impact the quality of your nursing care.
O = Be Open to Opportunities
In terms of the SWOT analysis of the state of your nursing career, opportunities can be whatever constitutes positivity and forward movement.
For example, you may have just gotten married and you and your spouse have moved to a new city. The opportunities, in this case, are that you’re now happily married, you have a loving partner who supports your professional and personal growth, and you’re moving to a city with a high demand for nurses.
Your opportunities may be that you just reconnected with a former colleague who has influence in a very well-respected hospital where you’d like to work, or you just received certification in cardiac care and are now a more valuable candidate for a certain position.
Slot Analysis Terms Meaning
Opportunities aren’t just specific jobs; they are actually aspects of your life, relationships, career, or even your living situation that seem to hold the potential to positively impact your nursing career.
T = Understand the Threats
Slot Analysis Terms Examples
The threats within a SWOT analysis have to do with the challenges that you’re facing in relation to your ability to fulfil your own professional mission as a nurse.
For instance, a threat may be that your small community hospital is about to be purchased by a national hospital chain with a history of very poor management, and some employees are likely to be fired.
A threat from your personal life may be that your partner has asked for a divorce, your mother is now on hospice, or your health is compromised in a way that makes working a full-time job quite challenging.
Some threats are from the outside — like your hospital being bought — and some come from the inside in terms of your physical or mental health, or personal characteristics that make it difficult for you to hold a job or manage work relationships.
A Global Picture
A SWOT analysis is a global (if not fully comprehensive) snapshot of your perceptions of the state of your nursing career and your personal strengths and weaknesses.
If you’re willing, do a SWOT analysis every year or two, you’ll have the chance to very clearly and empirically observe the ways in which your personal and professional lives have changed over time.
The SWOT is just another tool for self-reflection and personal growth. Use it to your advantage, and your career will benefit from your greatly increased self-knowledge.