Bank Of America Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

INTRODUCTION

Bank of America, known as the nation’s bank, was formed in 1998 through the merger with California Bank of America. The Bank of America is considered as the 2nd largest national bank, which comprises of 4500 branches in 21 states. The bank serves more than 27 million households and 2 million businesses and works more effectively than the Federal Reserve System. Moreover, the bank comprises of 140,000 employees across 190 nations with the annual revenue of $8 billion. The objective of the bank is to build a strong relationship with the customers and clients and connect them with the financial solutions they require.

The Bank of America dominates the market in the United States and maintains the strategy to gain a competitive edge over competitors globally. However, the intense competition has led Bank of America to face multiple challenges in maintaining growth and success. Moreover, high competition also created challenges for the national banks to localize the product and services for their customers. Furthermore, banks considered financial services as commodities and with this bottom-line orientation, the company cannot grow on innovation and creativity in the future.

Therefore, the company will need to analyze the strategy to bring change in the organization and initiate innovation to grow in the future. Moreover, it should introduce a strategy of cost reduction and control mechanism to gain competitive advantage sand increase customer’s satisfaction. Furthermore, the company should develop an organic growth strategy and a higher wallet share of existing customers. The organic growth strategy will reduce earnings volatility and provide greater profitability and productivity. Apart from that, Washington Mutual (WAMU), one of the innovative U.S. banks, introduced a new model for customers’ experiences, and benchmark their services with other service oriented company retailing.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

According to the case, multiple challenges are faced by Bank of America that resist the bank to maintain their competitive advantage. The challenges include lack of R&D department, lack of formal processes, methodologies, ineffective marketing department and lack of resource commitment. However, the bank’s information technology department provides full support to leverage technology and software in the organization.

Moreover, the CEO of the Bank Kenneth Lewis proposed a strategy to launch ten new branches that will increase the experiment capacity by 50%. However, this proposal leads Butler and Brady into the dilemma that whether to accept the proposal into its experimentation portfolio or reject it. The Butler and Brady are handled by Bank of America Innovation and development (I&D) team in Atlanta. Furthermore, another challenge for Butler and Brady is that there is no formal infrastructure to propose new ideas.

Therefore, butler and Brady need to analyze the new strategic decision proposed by CEO and bring effective change in the organization. Moreover, the management needs to analyze the innovative ideas to improve customers connect and service capabilities. However, this case is about strategy and execution and therefore, it is necessary to conduct SWOT analysis, to drive possible solution and implement a right course of action.

SWOT analysis

Strengths

A major strength of the Bank of America is that it dominates the market in the United States and maintains the strategy to gain a competitive edge over competitors globally. Another strength of the bank is its strong financial sheets that will help the corporation to grow in the future. Moreover, the bank has less turnover rate and complete support from the senior management. Furthermore, the Bank of America already has sufficient budget and the Innovation and development (I&D) branches, which has increased the bank’s 10% revenue.

Weaknesses

The bank has a lack of R&D department and spends less money to provide training facilities to existing and new employees. Moreover, the deposited growth rate and lack of I&D is another weakness of the bank. Furthermore, the Bank of America Corporation is not so large that its peers compete with the bank.

Opportunities

The Bank of America can expand and enter into foreign banking to gain competitive advantage. Moreover, the wider national roll out would be easy for the bank and should leverage its E&D department to build strong customer relationship and further prosper in the future. Furthermore, if the new proposed strategy and turnaround under performed banks become successful, then this will lead the bank to win greater prominence in the banking industry.

Threats

The biggest threat to the bank is the economic recession and rising unemployment rate. Moreover, if the management fails to implement proposed strategy, then the existence of Innovation and development will be in danger...................

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