PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets
PSS World Medical has grown rapidly since its founding in 1983, largely by acquisitions. It has recently had some trouble digesting a large acquisition, and its stock price is quite depressed. The CEO and his senior management team confront the question of whether the strong culture organization they have built, and the practices they are using to manage the company, will stand it in good stead at its larger size and facing the current challenges. Also, the senior management team is wondering why Wall Street doesn't fully appreciate what the company has accomplished and its management strengths.
Swot Analysis of "PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets" written by Charles A. O'Reilly, Jeffrey Pfeffer includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Pss Digesting facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Managing people, Organizational culture, Personnel policies, Supply chain and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets casestudy better are - – increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is backlash against globalization, increasing energy prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, technology disruption,
wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Pss Digesting, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Pss Digesting operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Pss Digesting
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Organizational Development field.
4. Making a Organizational Development topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Pss Digesting
Strengths PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Pss Digesting in PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets Harvard Business Review case study are -
Learning organization
- Pss Digesting is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Pss Digesting is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Organizational Development segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Pss Digesting digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Pss Digesting has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Training and development
– Pss Digesting has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Pss Digesting in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Innovation driven organization
– Pss Digesting is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Analytics focus
– Pss Digesting is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Charles A. O'Reilly, Jeffrey Pfeffer can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
High brand equity
– Pss Digesting has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Pss Digesting to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to lead change in Organizational Development field
– Pss Digesting is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Pss Digesting in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Pss Digesting has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Pss Digesting has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Pss Digesting has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Pss Digesting is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Organizational Development segment. Pss Digesting needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Pss Digesting to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets, is just above the industry average. Pss Digesting needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Pss Digesting is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Need for greater diversity
– Pss Digesting has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Pss Digesting has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Pss Digesting needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Pss Digesting has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Charles A. O'Reilly, Jeffrey Pfeffer suggests that, Pss Digesting is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Pss Digesting has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Pss Digesting has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Pss Digesting, firm in the HBR case study PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Opportunities PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets are -
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Pss Digesting can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Pss Digesting can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Pss Digesting to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Organizational Development industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Pss Digesting can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Pss Digesting in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Organizational Development segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Pss Digesting can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Organizational Development segment.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Pss Digesting is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Pss Digesting has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Pss Digesting to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Pss Digesting can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Pss Digesting can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Organizational Development industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Pss Digesting can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Pss Digesting can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Pss Digesting has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Pss Digesting to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets case study. Pss Digesting can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Pss Digesting can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets are -
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Organizational Development field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Pss Digesting can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Environmental challenges
– Pss Digesting needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Pss Digesting can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Organizational Development industry.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Pss Digesting will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Increasing wage structure of Pss Digesting
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Pss Digesting.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Pss Digesting can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets .
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Pss Digesting has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Organizational Development industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Pss Digesting needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Organizational Development sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Pss Digesting is facing in Organizational Development sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Pss Digesting in the Organizational Development sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Pss Digesting needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Organizational Development industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets, Pss Digesting may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Organizational Development .
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Pss Digesting in the Organizational Development industry. The Organizational Development industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of PSS World Medical: The Challenges of Growth and the Financial Markets is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Pss Digesting needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.