Strengths Weaknesses Analysis for Defense Company

Raytheon's SWOT Analysis Detailed Strengths One of the fundamental strengths of Raytheon is its history. The company has been around since the early decades of the 20th century, and has regularly worked with different governmental agencies in both a covert and overt capacity since. As such, the company (which adopted its present name during 1959) (CorpWatch, 2007) is one of the more notable companies in the defense and aerospace industries.

Its history adds to its reputation and, at this point, one can argue that its reputation influences its present regard in the business world. Another definite strength of this company is its employees. The company has less than 100,000 employees. Moreover, it also has holdings and facilities in a worldwide capacity, which helps to keep its employment rates high.

The primary boon associated with that number of employees is that the company has the manpower to keep pace with a production schedule that currently includes a number of weapons and aircraft utilized by the defense industry. Another critical strength of Raytheon is its revenues. Due in part to its longstanding history and involvement with governmental and defense affairs, Raytheon regularly earns close to $20 billion dollars in revenues.

With such revenues, the company is able to expand its presence globally, and even mask it -- as need be -- for certain purposes and on certain occasions. Moreover, such revenues enable the company to routinely compete with other governmental defense industry contractors for the top five positions in the world. Finally, Raytheon has a number of subsidiary companies that enable it to maintain its hold on contracting work for the defense industry. Some of these companies have established significant relationships with governmental entities.

For instance, Raytheon's subsidiary E-Systems is nearly interchangeable with the Central Intelligence Agency, both in terms of the resources and the deployment of these entities (CorpWatch, 2007). Weaknesses With all of the aforementioned strengths, there are not a substantial amount of weaknesses that exist internal to Raytheon. Perhaps the only one existent is the bad press that the company has earned over the years for some murky, shadowy deals that surfaced before a public audience.

The ramifications of such questionable if not outright illegal dealings are that the company has had to disseminate millions of dollars in fines over the years. Nonetheless, it would be difficult to cogently argue that the company does not have these millions of dollars to pay out to various federal and regulatory entities. Still, in the early part of the 1990's the company was caught in a number of sequential moves in which it had inflated the prices of its various goods and services.

It was caught doing so with a radar contract in 1994, the price of its Patriot missiles the year before, and the price of missile testing equipment at the start of the decade (CorpWatch, 2007). In addition to the negative publicity it suffered during each of these debacles, the company also had to pay out nearly 10 million in fees for damages incurred by its dishonest pricing systems. Its penchant for paying out multimillion dollar fines dates at least as far back ass the late 1980s (CorpWatch).

It is quite possible that the company has taken some strategic measures to ensure that it does not incur any more of these fines. Still, they are a part of its legacy that are viewed as a weakness rather than one of its numerous strengths -- although the company could have possibly simply improved in raising its prices unfairly without getting caught doing so. Opportunities One of the opportunities for Raytheon is the international strife that is characterizing current global relations.

Specifically, the War on Terror presents an opportunity for this company to continue to produce weapons and aircraft to help the efforts of the United States. The fact that there is war means that there is a need for the destructive and espionage devices that Raytheon produces. Were their international peace, there would be significantly less opportunity for this company to produce its goods. The privatization of the wars being fought in contemporary times also provides "external" (your text, p. 153) opportunities for this particular company.

Quite simply, there are a number of United States citizens that are currently engaging in military action overseas against alleged terrorist groups such as Isis. Thus, the client base of Raytheon could similarly diversify to provide weapons and other devices for this growing customer base. Additionally, there are some private security companies that are engaged in areas of defense that have typically been handled by the government.

These private companies help to represent the privatization of the defense industry, which means that Raytheon has a greater number of clientele to which it could pitch and provide its assortment of weapons, espionage paraphernalia, and transportation devices. Raytheon's fairly recent acquisition of Websense (Associated Press, 2015) represents a significant opportunity for the company, and a chance to conduct business in an alternate vertical industry. Websense helps to provide information technology-based security in world which is continually witnessing new forms of cyber attacks.

Moreover, Websense typically targets its solutions to private industry businesses, which enables Raytheon to expand its presence in this field. Thus, in addition to providing conventional physical defense mechanisms, the company can now also provide virtual defense mechanisms against internet based attacks on companies. This acquisition represents a significant opportunity for the company. Threats The primary threats to Raytheon come in the form of its competitors, which are both considerable in terms of their degree of proficiency in the defense and aerospace industries, as well as in their numbers.

There are at least three companies that have surpassed Raytheon in revenues and which are vying for some of the same private and public sector contracts as Raytheon. These include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman. The threat that these companies pose to Raytheon are myriad. Each of them has just as much (if not more) capability to provide the same sort of weapons and espionage equipment that Raytheon does.

Moreover, the fact that Raytheon has more than one serious competition (and has three altogether) means that competition between these companies is all the more.