Swot Analysis of "To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question" written by Srikant M. Datar includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Trim Pharmaceutical facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Costs, Product development and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing energy prices,
increasing household debt because of falling income levels, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Trim Pharmaceutical, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Trim Pharmaceutical 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 To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Trim Pharmaceutical
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Finance & Accounting field.
4. Making a Finance & Accounting topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Trim Pharmaceutical
Strengths To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Trim Pharmaceutical in To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question Harvard Business Review case study are -
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Trim Pharmaceutical in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Analytics focus
– Trim Pharmaceutical 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 Srikant M. Datar 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.
Organizational Resilience of Trim Pharmaceutical
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Trim Pharmaceutical does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management
– Trim Pharmaceutical is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Innovation driven organization
– Trim Pharmaceutical is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Finance & Accounting industry
– To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Trim Pharmaceutical to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Trim Pharmaceutical to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Finance & Accounting field
– Trim Pharmaceutical 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 Trim Pharmaceutical in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Trim Pharmaceutical 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 To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Diverse revenue streams
– Trim Pharmaceutical is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Trim Pharmaceutical 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 To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Learning organization
- Trim Pharmaceutical 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 Trim Pharmaceutical is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Training and development
– Trim Pharmaceutical has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question 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.
Weaknesses To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Trim Pharmaceutical 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Trim Pharmaceutical, firm in the HBR case study To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Srikant M. Datar suggests that, Trim Pharmaceutical 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question HBR case study mentions - Trim Pharmaceutical takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question, it seems that the employees of Trim Pharmaceutical don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Trim Pharmaceutical 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Trim Pharmaceutical 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Trim Pharmaceutical is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Finance & Accounting segment. Trim Pharmaceutical needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Trim Pharmaceutical 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 To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question, is just above the industry average. Trim Pharmaceutical 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question, in the dynamic environment Trim Pharmaceutical has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Trim Pharmaceutical has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Trim Pharmaceutical has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Opportunities To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question | 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 To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Trim Pharmaceutical 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Trim Pharmaceutical can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Trim Pharmaceutical operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Finance & Accounting sector.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Trim Pharmaceutical to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Trim Pharmaceutical can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Trim Pharmaceutical has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Trim Pharmaceutical in the consumer business. Now Trim Pharmaceutical can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Trim Pharmaceutical is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Trim Pharmaceutical 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, To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Trim Pharmaceutical 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Trim Pharmaceutical to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Trim Pharmaceutical to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Trim Pharmaceutical 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 Finance & Accounting segment.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Trim Pharmaceutical has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Trim Pharmaceutical to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question case study. Trim Pharmaceutical can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Trim Pharmaceutical can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Threats To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question are -
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. Trim Pharmaceutical 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Trim Pharmaceutical can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Trim Pharmaceutical business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Trim Pharmaceutical needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Finance & Accounting industry regulations.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Trim Pharmaceutical with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Trim Pharmaceutical in the Finance & Accounting sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question, Trim Pharmaceutical may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Finance & Accounting .
Consumer confidence and its impact on Trim Pharmaceutical demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
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.
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. Trim Pharmaceutical needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Finance & Accounting industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Trim Pharmaceutical high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Environmental challenges
– Trim Pharmaceutical 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. Trim Pharmaceutical can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Finance & Accounting field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Trim Pharmaceutical can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question 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 To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question 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 To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question 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 To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question 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 To Trim or Not to Trim: That Is the Question 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 Trim Pharmaceutical needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.