In this report, the discussion is going to be done on the strategic information system of Westpac bank. Westpac bank is among the four major banks of Australia, with the headquarters located in the Sydney. The westpac bank has divided in two segments, bank associated with the institution and the bank associated with consumer. Not only in Australia, Westpac bank holds a good rank in New Zealand. The bank had formed alliance with several other foreign banks. The main objective of the bank is to increase the wealth of the members associated with the society. The vision of the bank is to gain the leadership in the sector of finance globally. The paper is going to discuss about the westpac bak in detail. In order to determine the strategic information system of the westpac bank , SWOT analysis and PESTEL analysis will be done, The competitive environment faced by the Westpac bank will be discussed in detailed. The opportunities and the threats that are associated with the bank will also be discussed. Second part of the paper will discss abput the resource required by the Westpac bank. The capabilities of the Westpac bank will be analyzed in the report. In addition to this, an information system will be proposed in order to improve the strategies of the westpac bank. The proposed system will be evaluated with a recommendation for improving the information system of the Westpac bank.
Business background:
Westpac bank is among the largest bank of Australia and was founded in year 1817. Headquarter of Westpac bank is located at Sydney. This offers a large portfolio of financial service and banking to their customers. More than 35,000 employees are associated with Westpac bank. The bank is working for achieveing the target of becoming the world’s greatest bank providing the best facility to their customers so that they can achieve the best financial services. Westpac bank has developed several strategies in order to overcome the challenges faced by them. For example the company has formed alliance with customers , this includes business banks that handles customers and sales. The vision of the bank is to evolve as the greatest financial provider, helping communities and people so that they can increase their wealth. The system of the Westpac bank has embedded the core values in the company in order to support the bank, this values includes encouraging teamwork so that they can work together in order to achieve a goal . The main objective of the Westpac back is to direct their customers towards the correct path. The objective of the company needs to be reviewed every year so that they can understand the position of the bank and can determine new features in order to cope up with the evolving business environment(westpac.com.au, 2018). The bank provides best facilities in the area of foreign exchange among different banks of Australia. The aim of the bank is to give the customer full satisfaction. In addition to this the organization has been optimistic towards the organization change and always comes up with new ideas in order to cope up with the market need.
Type of Industry:
The industry of westpac bank is one of the largest bank specialized in financial services. Westpac Institutional bank delivers a wide range of solutions for corporate, institutional, public sector and commercial. This is associated with the markets Australia, Asia, New Zealand, US and Europe(westpac.com.au, 2018). The relationship management teams of Westpac bank are focused on giving strategic connections in order to provide financial solutions to the clients their industries.
Environmental analysis:
The environmental analysis of the westpac bank includes PESTEL analysis. The process of environmental analysis has following stages: environmental scanning, scanning means analyzing the process of the environment and identifying the features that will influence the business. For determining the environmental analysis, PESEL analysis is needed to be done. PESTEL analysis stands for political , economical , social , technological , legal and environmental.
Political: This includes the changes that are done within the policy such as introduction of bank levy. The policy of the bank changes with time and the requirements of the market. This influences the industry adversely. Major bank levy bill was passed in 2017 by the parliament of Australia, this mandates a 0.06(Altameem,Aldrees and Alsaeed 2014). Westpac bank falls under this mandate. The aim of the government is to reduce the budget and strengthen the structural position of the bank. The impact of this is directly on the shareholders and consumers that are associated with the bank.
Economic: Economic analysis of the westpac bank includes determining the economy associated with the bank. This contains the factor that states in which direction the economy might move. This helps to build strategies in order to cope up with the changes. The factors that will affect the business:
Social factors: The thinking of the people varies from country to country, as the mindset of people is different. This attitude towards the business influences the growth of the business(Hoque, Hossin and Khan 2016). The factors that will help to identify the social factors of the Westpac bank are a s follows:
Technological factors: The technological factors include the transformation of the service and digital product. The digitization offers opportunity in order to increase the efficiency and provide service in a innovative way all over the industry(Upadhyay et al. 2017). Westpac has introduced 160 new features and enhanced the digital banking throughout their banking platform so that they can provide best service for their customers; this includes online payment, loan application and many more. In order to achieve success, it has also built partnership with fintech starts ups so that it can strengthen their characteristics in the field of digital technologies.
Legal: Legal factors include analyzing the changing environment that will affect the business. Implementation of strict rules and regulations set by the authorities can challenge the environment of the business. The Australian commission has launched an investigation for westpac bank to determine the practices involved in the bank. The bank has implemented new policies in order to increase the security involved in maintaining the financial details(Alshubaily and Altameem 2017).
Environmental factors: The environmental factors involved in the Westpac bank are to change the business practices. The business gets affected with the change in the climatic conditions. The reactions of the customer regarding to a particular factor may varies and this may lead to issue(Koech, Gichunge and Thuo 2016). The necessary environment factors that are needed to be analyzed for business are:
Demographic factor: This is referred to as the study of statistical data that includes the details about population, especially the human beings. This is basically used to determine the dynamic population , that is the population that keeps on changing over time span. The demographic is divided are gender, race, age, household income, home ownership and disabilities(Kavanagh and Johnson 2017).
The industry environment can be determined with the help of the porter’s five forces. The five forces is used to analyze the competitive intensity that affects the business(Dwivedi et al. 2015).
Threat from new entrants:
There arises threat from the new coming banks. Each bank starts a business with the aim of getting profit and can gain huge consumers among their rivals. But in the banking sector , it becomes very much difficult to overcome the financial problems(Aversa,Cabantous and Haefliger 2018). This becomes very much necessary to understand the consumer requirement and offer schemes accordingly. Thus, it takes huge effort to understand the requirement of the customers and prepare a strategy accordingly. Thus, the threat from the new entrant is less, as the consumer will look forward to get associated with the bank that is having a good reputation in the market instead of going for a new bank.
Power of Suppliers:
The primary resource of every banking sector is capita. There are four main suppliers:
With the utilization of these four suppliers, the bank becomes sure of the resources they need in order to serve their customer and this enables maintaining sufficient amount of capital so that they can meet the withdrawal expectations(Tsang 2014). The power of supplier is dependent on the market, and this gets fluctuated with the need of the market.
Power of Buyers:
The buyer does not affects the banking sector, but there is lies a major factor that affects the power of the customer that is switching the cost. The internet has greatly influenced the banking sector. This is very hard to convince the customer to switch their bank account, as they may not feel secure in changing the bank. Thus it takes a lot effort to convince the customer to change into another banking platform(Grover et al. 2018).
Availability of Substitutes:
Bank possesses a major threat from the non-financial sectors. There are huge chances of getting substituted by a non financial competitor. There is no real threat for the industry but some of the non financial sector offers banking services. This turns to be a great threat for the banking sector(Peppard and Ward 2016).
Competitive rivalry:
This is referred to as the competition that is likely to be faced by the Westpac bank by other rivalry banks. The other bank attracts the customer by offering a lower financing, higher rates, better investment policies and good convincing power(Chorafas 2016). The competition is being determined by analyzing that which bank can provide best and fastest service with better security. Some banks have the habit to forming alliance with other banks instead of spending money on advertising and marketing so that they can gain huge profit.
Fig1: Porter’s five forces
Source: (westpac.com.au, 2018)
The westpac bank provides an innovative way of making the payment with the help of modern platform. The assembly payment helps to create new solutions and enhances the services provided by the bank. This helps in improving the experiences through use of high touch consulting involvement so that it can identify the complex requirements and delivers the requirements with the use of API driven technology. The competitors of the Westpac bank are nab and ANZ (Laudon and Laudon 2015).
The opportunities that are associated with the Westpac bank are the scope of providing better services with the use of digital future increases. The bank targets at improving the home loan for the customer by digitizing the end-to-end home loan facility(Galliers and Leidner 2014). More than 72% customers of Westpac bank uses digital way of connecting with the bank. This helps them to gain easy banking process. Investments are made in new technologies so that it can fit into the emerging business model.
The possible threats that are likely to be faced by the banking sector are cyber security issues arise with the implementation of the digital technology in the banking. Rise of fintech leads to threatening the traditional way of banking.
Tangible and intangible assets:
Tangible assets are the assets that are measurable and physical assets that are needed to be used in operating a company. Assets include the property, equipment and plant comes under tangible assets. There are two types of assets associated with tangible assets, this includes:
Current assets: The current asset includes item such as inventory, cash and marketable securities. These items are used within a year and can be used to get emergency cash.
Fixed assets: These assets are noncurrent assets that a company uses in their operation for over a year. These assets are recorded in the balance sheet such as property, plant and equipment and includes such as machinery, office furniture, trucks and many more. The money that is generated with the use of tangible assets are recorded in the income statement in form of revenue (Cassidy 2016).
Intangible assets:
This are referred to as the nonphysical assets that are used for long-term period. This are often the intellectual assets and it becomes difficult to assign a value to this asset as this are uncertain. The type of intangible assets is:
Band equity: This is considered as the intangible asset because the brand value is not a physical asset and is determined by the perception of the consumers. Brand equity is of two types negative rand equity and positive brand equity (Arvidsson,Holmström and Lyytinen 2014).
The aim of the bank is to help their members and increase the wealth of their members. The bank is capable of delivering online help for their members and services faster than other banks. This also provides lower interest rate and a 24 hours help from an expert accountant. The bank provides several financial services in Australia, New Zealand and all the nearby pacific areas, this aims at becoming the global market leader and focuses on other region. The bank works at providing satisfaction to their customers (Galliers and Leidner 2014). The organization has come up with positive approaches towards ethical business and corporate social responsibility. The values applied by the Westpac bank in their organization have helped to increase the efficiency and return on investment. This helps the bank to maintain its position among the top banks of Australia.
Core competency:
The core competencies are the main blocks of every organization. With the help of this the strategies the organization can maintain the competencies the criteria includes:
It is necessary to develop a information system that will help to maintain the structure of the organization. Their always lies a scope to improve the strategies that will help to develop the business. Westpac provides several types of services for their customers this includes loan for the student, migrating accounts and many more (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). The main objective of the bank is to serve the their customers with best facilities so that they can gain the trust of their customers. There are areas where the bank needs to focus such as for home loans and for setting up business in the consumer level. Their are some additional objectives that will help to increase the growth of the organization, this includes:
Information system helps the banking industry and maintains the growth of the organization. The sectors are dependent on managing the information and data. The requirements are necessary to be maintained in the information system at different leveled and checks the security involved in the organization.
In order to achieve the aim of getting globalised , I will suggest to implement some strategies ion developing the Westpac bank. This are :
In order to rule over the finance sector , the bank should go for differentiating the products. This will help to distinguishing the products in the market.
In order to attract more customers, I will suggest the bank should come up with extraordinary financial services. This will also add up to competitive advantages.
Apart from these strategies, market penetration strategy is needed to be implemented within the business plan. The bank should gain the license so that it can operate its branches in various developing countries.
The area of the home loan should be developed in the banking sector of Westpac bank.
These strategies will help to develop the features and services provided by the bank for their customers.
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be stated that the aim of the Westpac bank is to have global leadership in the field of finance. The above report discusses about Westpac bank and the features that are provided by the bank for their customer. This is very much necessary to develop strategies that will help to develop the bank. the opportunities and the threats associated with the bank are described in the report . PESTLE analysis for the Westpac bank is also done in the report. All the factors are being described in brief. Moreover, the vision of the bank is described. The report discusses the rival companies of the Westpac bank and the competitive strategies associated with the bank. The aim of the strategic analysis is to build up some strategies that will help in achieving the vision. The report suggest the need of differentiating the products and the need of market penetration strategy. This suggestion will help to build the global leadership.
References
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