Pitney Bowes SWOT and PESTLE Analysis

Strength

1. Access to customer base: Pitney Bowes has access to over 1.5 million existing small business accounts as well as 90% of the Fortune 500 who are long-time clients of the company. So, that’s a big positive for the company since any new products which they have plans to launch can be easily developed and marketed keeping in mind the needs of the target customers and the access to the customer which the company has.

2. Presence in both physical and digital landscape for mailing business: Pitney Bowes has presence to both the physical and digital mailing business. So, they can integrate both the channels and deliver seamless experience to their customers which many of the competitors may fail to do, thus serving as a big USP for the company.They enable the mail business to leverage digital technology from the software business to create innovative products, and the software business to leverage mail business channels to sell digital products to the company’s worldwide base.

3. Software as a product offering: Pitney Bowes offers proprietary software like location intelligence, Customer engagement and customer information management systems as a product through which it gets a steady stream of revenues due to licensing of those software packages.

4. Synergies within the product lines: Because of the Pitney Bowes’sbusiness mix, they are able to take advantage of all the trends like cloud computing, mobility, big data and power of social media, whether by making it easier for clients to expand through ecommerce in faraway markets, simplify overseas shipping to make the consumer experience easy and seamless, or use location intelligence technology to help sales teams better understand markets and enable social media companies to enhance the user experience. This creates a synergy within the sub-business and results in higher customer satisfaction and increased differentiation for the company in terms of product offerings.

Weakness

1. Major dependency on United States for revenue: It can be seen from the Pitney Bowes financial reports that the company has revenues of approximately 75% from only one market i.e. USA in this case. This provides a huge risk in terms of dependency of one market for majority of revenue and imposes a huge uncertainty in terms of political and legal changes associated with operation in that country.

2. Large dependence for revenues from physical mail deliveries i.e. SMB segment: Huge dependence on mailing business for generation of revenues (more than 50% of the total revenue) in today’s changing world where the market for physical mails is on the decline in terms of volume can have adverse effect on the future growth and profitability for the company

Opportunity

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Threat

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Political

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Economic

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Social

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Technological

1. Innovation in cloud and analytics to enhance service offerings: Information technology companies need to leverage new digital channels to modernize its business processes and technology. Mailing solutions, equipment, & software is the core business of Pitney Bowes and the company is reinventing the same in line with the digital trends. The company launched Pitney Bowes Commerce Cloud in 2016 which has helped the integration of physical and digital offerings andleverages the industrial Internet of Things (IoT). The company uses information from sensors on production mail machines and leverages cloud-analytics which can help in automation of several tasks and processes. The focus on digital transformation of Pitney Bowes production mail business has helped to focus on security, speed, accuracy and precision and ultimately improved productivity and user experience for clients.

2. Technology enhancement through inorganic route: Pitney Bowes is a market leader it its segment and in order to maintain its competitive advantage the company has pursued acquisition in strategic technology areas over the last few years. The company acquired Maponics, a provider of boundary sets and geospatial data in 2016. This will strengthen Pitney’s location intelligence, shipping and mailing and e-commerce segment. The acquisition of ProSORTin early 2017 will further strengthen Pitney’s mailing solutions.In September 2017, Pitney acquired Newgistics; an e-commerce and retail logistics company.

Legal

1. Upcoming data regulations opening up new opportunities: With increase in amount of customer data being held with providers, governments have come stricter data regulations for data protection and customer access to data. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be enforced in May 2018 which will increase data protection regulations and also empower customers to easier access to their data and greater flexibility to move it between providers. These regulations will apply to organizations across the globe and non-compliance will lead to fines of greater of €20 Million or 4% of annual global turnover. This will open up opportunities for technology companies such as Pitney Bowes for data compliance and Single Customer View solutions.

Environmental

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