LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India
This case highlights the journey of an organization that was set up in Hyderabad, in southern India, to provide affordable maternal care services to women from low-income urban families. LifeSpring Hospitals grew from a single hospital into a chain of nine hospitals, all in Hyderabad, in only five years. The chief executive officer has spent this initial period trying out new methods, continuously fine-tuning the model and learning from this process of experimentation. As the company seeks to scale the business to 200 hospitals, the chief executive officer must decide whether or not the business model is defined clearly enough to warrant the start of a rapid scaling process. The case is unique because it juxtaposes a commitment to high-quality health care service delivery through processes and protocols with a commitment to making maternal care affordable to low-income urban women. LifeSpring Hospitals tries to achieve these seemingly disparate objectives by attempting to create a financially sustainable business model. Authors S. Ramakrishna Velamuri, Priya Anant, and Monidipa Mukherjee are affiliated with Indian School of Business. Author Wei Zhang is affiliated with CEIBS Health Care Policy Management Center
Swot Analysis of "LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India" written by S. Ramakrishna Velamuri, Wei Zhang, Priya Anant, Monidipa Mukherjee includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Lifespring Hospitals facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Strategy and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India casestudy better are - – technology disruption, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing energy prices, wage bills are increasing, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Lifespring Hospitals, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Lifespring Hospitals 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 LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Lifespring Hospitals
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Strategy & Execution field.
4. Making a Strategy & Execution topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Lifespring Hospitals
Strengths LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Lifespring Hospitals in LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India Harvard Business Review case study are -
High brand equity
– Lifespring Hospitals has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Lifespring Hospitals to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Digital Transformation in Strategy & Execution segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Lifespring Hospitals digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Lifespring Hospitals 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Lifespring Hospitals 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 LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India 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 Lifespring Hospitals 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Strategy & Execution industry
– LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Lifespring Hospitals to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Lifespring Hospitals to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Lifespring Hospitals in the sector have low bargaining power. LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Lifespring Hospitals to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Training and development
– Lifespring Hospitals has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Lifespring Hospitals is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Lifespring Hospitals is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Ability to lead change in Strategy & Execution field
– Lifespring Hospitals 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 Lifespring Hospitals in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Lifespring Hospitals
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Lifespring Hospitals does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Lifespring Hospitals has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Lifespring Hospitals has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Weaknesses LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India, is just above the industry average. Lifespring Hospitals 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Lifespring Hospitals 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Strategy & Execution strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Lifespring Hospitals is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Strategy & Execution segment. Lifespring Hospitals needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Lifespring Hospitals to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Need for greater diversity
– Lifespring Hospitals 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Lifespring Hospitals 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Lifespring Hospitals, firm in the HBR case study LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Lifespring Hospitals has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Lifespring Hospitals even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Lifespring Hospitals 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Lifespring Hospitals is planning to shift buying processes online.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Lifespring Hospitals 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.
Opportunities LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India | 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 LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Lifespring Hospitals can develop new processes and procedures in Strategy & Execution industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Lifespring Hospitals is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Lifespring Hospitals 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 Strategy & Execution segment.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Lifespring Hospitals to increase its market reach. Lifespring Hospitals will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Loyalty marketing
– Lifespring Hospitals 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Lifespring Hospitals in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Strategy & Execution segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Lifespring Hospitals 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 LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Lifespring Hospitals to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
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. Lifespring Hospitals can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Lifespring Hospitals can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Lifespring Hospitals 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Lifespring Hospitals can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Lifespring Hospitals 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.
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 Lifespring Hospitals in the consumer business. Now Lifespring Hospitals can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Lifespring Hospitals 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.
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.
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 Lifespring Hospitals business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Lifespring Hospitals is facing in Strategy & Execution sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Lifespring Hospitals has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Strategy & Execution industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Lifespring Hospitals needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Strategy & Execution 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Lifespring Hospitals in the Strategy & Execution industry. The Strategy & Execution 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India, Lifespring Hospitals may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Strategy & Execution .
Regulatory challenges
– Lifespring Hospitals 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 Strategy & Execution industry regulations.
Increasing wage structure of Lifespring Hospitals
– 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 Lifespring Hospitals.
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. Lifespring Hospitals needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Strategy & Execution industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Lifespring Hospitals in the Strategy & Execution sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Lifespring Hospitals with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India 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 LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India 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 LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India 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 LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India 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 LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India 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 Lifespring Hospitals needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
Feel free to connect with us if you need business research.
You can download Excel Template of Case Study Solution & Analysis of LifeSpring Hospitals: Delivering Affordable, High-quality Maternal Health Care in India
