Case Study Description of Profamilia: Planning to Survive
The Association for the Wellbeing of the Colombian Family, Profamilia, is a private, nonprofit organization founded in September 1965 by Dr. Fernando Tamayo Ogliastri with the objective of distributing family planning to low income families. Profamilia was a pioneer in its field; its impact increased as it became both organizationally and administratively stronger, and as its focus on family planning was expanded to include sexual and reproductive health. After four decades of operation, Profamilia continued to offer services to attend to the sexual and reproductive health of Colombians. By mid-2003, Profamilia, spurred by changes in the health sector in Colombia with the implementation of Law 100 of 1993, needed to redefine its strategy. The health sector reform encouraged the entry of other organizations that competed directly with Profamilia, resulting in the organization's loss of its relative monopoly as a provider of reproductive health services and family planning products. The most visible consequence was the reduction of its participation in the market. Changes in the sector gave impulse to the process of strategic redefinition to face critical tradeoffs between social and economic value generation.
Authors :: Ivan Dario Lobo, Roberto Gutierrez, Raul Sanabria
Swot Analysis of "Profamilia: Planning to Survive" written by Ivan Dario Lobo, Roberto Gutierrez, Raul Sanabria includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Profamilia Reproductive facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Profamilia: Planning to Survive case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Social enterprise, Strategy and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Profamilia: Planning to Survive casestudy better are - – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, geopolitical disruptions, there is backlash against globalization, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, technology disruption, increasing commodity prices,
increasing energy prices, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Profamilia: Planning to Survive
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Profamilia: Planning to Survive case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Profamilia Reproductive, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Profamilia Reproductive 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 Profamilia: Planning to Survive can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Profamilia: Planning to Survive case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Profamilia Reproductive
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 Profamilia Reproductive
Strengths Profamilia: Planning to Survive | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Profamilia Reproductive in Profamilia: Planning to Survive Harvard Business Review case study are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Profamilia Reproductive 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 Profamilia: Planning to Survive HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Profamilia Reproductive has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Profamilia Reproductive 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.
High brand equity
– Profamilia Reproductive has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Profamilia Reproductive to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Strong track record of project management
– Profamilia Reproductive is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Profamilia Reproductive are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Profamilia Reproductive 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 Profamilia: Planning to Survive - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Innovation driven organization
– Profamilia Reproductive is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Profamilia: Planning to Survive Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Ability to lead change in Strategy & Execution field
– Profamilia Reproductive 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 Profamilia Reproductive in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Profamilia Reproductive
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Profamilia Reproductive does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Profamilia Reproductive has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Profamilia: Planning to Survive 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 Profamilia Reproductive in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Profamilia: Planning to Survive 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.
Weaknesses Profamilia: Planning to Survive | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Profamilia: Planning to Survive are -
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Profamilia: Planning to Survive, in the dynamic environment Profamilia Reproductive has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Profamilia Reproductive has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Profamilia: Planning to Survive HBR case study mentions - Profamilia Reproductive 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Profamilia Reproductive 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Profamilia: Planning to Survive, 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Profamilia Reproductive 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Profamilia Reproductive is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Profamilia: Planning to Survive 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
– Profamilia Reproductive 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Profamilia: Planning to Survive 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 Profamilia: Planning to Survive can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Profamilia Reproductive is planning to shift buying processes online.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Profamilia: Planning to Survive HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Profamilia Reproductive has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Profamilia Reproductive, firm in the HBR case study Profamilia: Planning to Survive needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Profamilia: Planning to Survive, it seems that the employees of Profamilia Reproductive 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.
Opportunities Profamilia: Planning to Survive | 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 Profamilia: Planning to Survive are -
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Profamilia Reproductive 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Profamilia Reproductive 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Profamilia Reproductive 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Profamilia Reproductive is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Profamilia: Planning to Survive 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Strategy & Execution industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Profamilia Reproductive 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. Profamilia Reproductive 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Profamilia Reproductive can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Profamilia Reproductive 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 Profamilia: Planning to Survive - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Profamilia Reproductive to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Profamilia Reproductive 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.
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. Profamilia Reproductive can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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 Profamilia Reproductive in the consumer business. Now Profamilia Reproductive can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Profamilia Reproductive 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Profamilia Reproductive 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, Profamilia: Planning to Survive, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Profamilia Reproductive to increase its market reach. Profamilia Reproductive 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.
Threats Profamilia: Planning to Survive External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Profamilia: Planning to Survive are -
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 Profamilia Reproductive business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing wage structure of Profamilia Reproductive
– 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 Profamilia Reproductive.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Profamilia Reproductive 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Profamilia Reproductive 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 Profamilia: Planning to Survive .
Regulatory challenges
– Profamilia Reproductive 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Profamilia Reproductive with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Environmental challenges
– Profamilia Reproductive 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. Profamilia Reproductive can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Profamilia Reproductive 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.
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 Profamilia Reproductive in the Strategy & Execution sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Profamilia Reproductive 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Strategy & Execution field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Profamilia Reproductive can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Profamilia: Planning to Survive 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 Profamilia: Planning to Survive 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 Profamilia: Planning to Survive 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 Profamilia: Planning to Survive 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 Profamilia: Planning to Survive 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 Profamilia Reproductive needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.