Strategic Resource Allocation & Planning Report: Ally Bank Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Ally Bank's strategic resource allocation and planning. It begins with an introduction to Ally Bank, its services, and its market position. The report then delves into the general environment analysis, including technological, demographic, economic, political, socio-cultural, physical, and global trends impacting the bank. An external industry analysis using Porter's Five Forces is presented, followed by a competitor analysis, highlighting key rivals like JP Morgan Chase and General Motors. The internal analysis utilizes a SWOT framework to identify Ally Bank's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The report then explores strategy formulation, outlining the steps involved in developing effective marketing and business strategies. Finally, a strategic action plan is discussed, including vision, mission, gap analysis, SMART goals, and progress monitoring. The report concludes with a summary of the key findings and references used.

Running Head: Strategic Resource Allocation & Planning
Strategic Resource Allocation & Planning
Ally Bank

Strategic Resource Allocation & Planning 1
Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
General Environment Analysis.....................................................................................................................3
External Industry Analysis............................................................................................................................4
Competitor Analysis (External)....................................................................................................................5
Internal Analysis..........................................................................................................................................5
Strengths..................................................................................................................................................6
Weaknesses.............................................................................................................................................6
Opportunities...........................................................................................................................................6
Threats.....................................................................................................................................................6
SWOT Analysis.............................................................................................................................................6
Strategy Formulation...................................................................................................................................7
Strategic Action Plan....................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................8
References.................................................................................................................................................10

Strategic Resource Allocation & Planning 2
Introduction
Ally bank is one of the largest banks in terms of providing finance for automotive financing
products in United States. It was a part of General Motors until 2009 and is located in Michigan,
United States. It provides services like auto financing, insurance, corporate finance and online
banking. In banking they are exceeding $75 in customer deposits, investment numbers are
250,000 customer accounts which make a total of $4.7 billion in assets, and in auto finance they
are serving 18,000 dealers and their transaction ranges from $15 million to $250 million in
corporate finance. In this report, general environment, its industry analysis, internal analysis,
SWOT, competitor analysis and strategic action plan is discussed (Ally, 2018).
General Environment Analysis
The general environmental are:
1. Technological Trends: Technology keeps on changing rapidly there days. If there is new
product launched 6 months before, there will again be a new technology after 6 months or
so to replace the previous one. Hence, organizations should have a keen eye on new
technology.
2. Demographic Trends: Demography is a study of human population. It includes age, size,
statistics, gender and occupation. In business, the most important thing is the humans. A
company works because of the work done by humans. The large the demography is, the
difficult it is for the business to excel but also there are more opportunities too on the
positive side.
3. Economic Trends: A company should never export its products to such a country where
there would not be much people spending on their product. VAT, GDP, Inflation, import
duty rate should be concerned before doing this.

Strategic Resource Allocation & Planning 3
4. Political Trends: Political trends limit the business. The government laws, pressure
groups and agencies are such kind of political trends which limits it. Marketing decisions
are influenced by these factors a lot.
5. Socio-cultural Trends: Society means people of different cultures. They affect the
business when the culture is not understood by the company.
6. Physical Trends: Natural forces are also important for the marketers to imbibe as they too
affect the marketing activities. Environmental sustainability is also to be considered by
the company as it is changing rapidly these days (Marketing - Insider, 2017).
7. Global Trends: It is basically the competition between two or more businesses. How is
the competitor company doing, is also to b e considered while growing self business.
External Industry Analysis
Porter’s five forces model should be considered by any company which is looking for growth or
for sustainability in the market. A non impressive company would be the one whose profit is
affected by these factors. Porter’s five forces are:
1. Buyer Power: It is actually the bargaining power of the customers. A buyer has a strong
impact on the firm if the buyer has many options in the market.
2. Supplier Power: Same as the customers, if there are less substitutes, suppliers of raw
material can raise their bars of prices for the firm.
3. Rivalry: It is important to keep all the information about the rival company or companies
as they can prove to be a threat.
4. New Entry: The Company which is at the profitable side will definitely attract the new
comers.
5. Substitution: There are a lot of substitute products in the market with fewer prices.
Hence, the customers are likely to move towards them. This can be a threat to the
company (Usman Ali Khan, 2015).

Strategic Resource Allocation & Planning 4
Competitor Analysis (External)
Competitor analysis can be done by knowing the threats and opportunities. After 2009, Ally
Bank has reached on another growth level. It has grown to a very extent by making its mark in
the industry. The company has given good performance in auto lending and direct online
banking. Though the competition is tough, Ally bank is standing firm in the industry by
providing good services on low rates. It is one of the largest auto financing company today. It
competes with all the leading companies like JP Morgan Chase, Santandar Consumer. But the
most important of all, its major competitor is one of its former joint companies which is General
Motors. Other banks like Nationwide Bank, Capital One Financial Corporation are also threat to
Ally bank as each one of them has different strengths. For example: National wide provides mind
blowing deals on the loans to their customers whereas Capital one provides best certificate of
deposits rates. After all this, Ally is still considered as one of the top banks (Beard, 2013).
Internal Analysis
The internal Analysis of the company can be easily done by SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis
focuses on the Strengths, weaknesses of the company as well as on the opportunities and threats.
Strengths
 It is a domestic market
 High profit and revenue generation
 Labor cost reduced
 Market size is 30% approximately.
Weaknesses
 High investments up to 15%.
 Bank is still facing the barriers.
 Lack of strategic relations.
Opportunities
 Income level always increasing

Strategic Resource Allocation & Planning 5
 New market
 New acquisitions.
 Venture Capitals.
 Market size can increase in future.
 Possibility of new products.
Threats
 Bargaining power of suppliers is high.
 Cost of the raw materials is rising day by day. (Swotanalysis24, 2017).
SWOT Analysis
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weakness, opportunity and Threat.
A brief explanation of the four points:
 Strength is the quality that makes a company achieves its success. Strengths can be
anything which makes a company different from others. The management should be well
experienced to fulfill the company with such strengths.
 Weakness is in the internal factors of the company. The issues due to which the company
is unable to achieve its goals or growth. Due to these weaknesses, the competitor
companies can be benefitted by making them the strengths for them.
 Opportunities are the factors that are external to the company but helps achieving the
growth to the company. These factors help the organization to make new strategies to
achieve its goal and make profit.
 Threats are the factors which deteriorates the company’s profit. They cannot be
controlled. The survival of the company could be on stake as they arise (researchgate,
2018).
Strategy Formulation

Strategic Resource Allocation & Planning 6
Strategy Formulation is the process where the organization makes the strategies for marketing
and meeting their goals. There are 6 steps for strategy formulation.
1. Define Organization: The first step is to know amount the company customers. Without
the customers, a company is nothing. Determining about the customer’s needs is
important.
2. Define Mission: Defining mission means a company’s long term goal as to what they are
going to do to make it to their goals.
3. Define Objective: Defining objectives includes production of goods, desired share
market, best customer services, advance technology and increase in sales.
4. Define Strategy: Developing the strategy to stay in market and fight with the competitors
is what is known as defining strategy.
5. Implementation of Strategies: The strategies which were developed should also be put
into one place so that they become effective.
6. Evaluation Process: After the implementation of the strategies, a company should keep a
check on the results on the market. If any changes are required, they can do it if they
proactive (saylor, 2013).
Strategic Action Plan
A strategy Action Plan is a kind of document which helps the company to achieve all the goals.
In 2012, Ally Bank rolled out the article mentioning about their strategic actions to strengthen
their company in terms of the financial profile and accelerating repayment of the U.S. Treasury’s
Investment (Ally, 2018). These action plans will help bank to grow and to further invest. Few
steps to develop a strategic action plan are:
1. Vision: A vision statement will be helpful in giving the reader the picture of the hopes of
becoming a successful organization.
2. Mission Statement: Mission statement shows what a company is all about and what it
desires to become.

Strategic Resource Allocation & Planning 7
3. Perform Gap Analysis: Gap analysis will create a difference in what the company is right
now and what is the vision. It will find out the gaps.
4. Smart Goals: The smart goals are those which can be achieved in a shorter span of time
working smartly.
5. Progress monitoring: Goals should be monitored constantly. They should be measured on
the basis of the time taken and percentage achieved (Jive, 2018).
Conclusion
Ally Bank has naked its mark in the market after getting up from the downfall they saw while
getting separated from GM. In this report, an introduction to Ally Bank is discussed. The factors
as to how it became one of the leading banks even after getting separated from General Motors
since 2009. Its strength and weaknesses are discussed. The opportunities that are there for Ally
Bank in the future as well as the threats from which it can be saved by performing SWOT
analysis. From doing industry analysis to internal and external analysis for Ally bank to
developing a strategy action plan, everything is discussed.

Strategic Resource Allocation & Planning 8
Reference
Ally. (2018). Retrieved from Ally.com: https://www.ally.com/files/pdf/ally_CompanyOverview.pdf
Beard, R. (2013, May 3). clientheartbeat. Retrieved January 23, 2018, from clientheartbeat.com:
http://blog.clientheartbeat.com/competitor-analysis-template/
Jive. (2018). Retrieved january 23, 2018, from jive.com: https://jive.com/resources/blog/5-step-
strategic-plan/
Marketing - Insider. (2017). Retrieved from marketing-insider.eu: https://marketing-insider.eu/macro-
environment/
researchgate. (2018). Retrieved 2018, from researchgate.net:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315054133_Strengths_Weaknesses_Opportunities_
and_Threats_SWOT_Analysis_and_Strategic_Planning_for_Iranian_Language_Institutions_Devel
opment
saylor. (2013, September). Retrieved January 23, 2018, from saylor.org: https://www.saylor.org/site/wp-
content/uploads/2013/09/Saylor.orgs-Strategy-Formulation.pdf
Swotanalysis24. (2017). Retrieved from Swotanalysis24.com: https://www.swotanalysis24.com/swot-
a/4962-swot-analysis-ally-financial-inc.html
Usman Ali Khan, M. N. (2015). A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL. International Journal
of Economics, Commerce and Management , 3 (6).