Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Finance & Accounting
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living
Tom Alperin's National Development has purchased a building site in affluent Wellesley, MA, and is in the process of deciding whether to build apartments, a combination of independent living and assisted living units for seniors, or perhaps even higher acuity facilities.The case describes several issues for the continuum of senior care alternatives for residents and developers. What motivates seniors to leave their homesteads for much smaller spaces? How can they afford to do so? What are the physical as well as operational challenges for operators when serving the different levels of acuity? The case also describes what zoning issues may be faced by developers who seek to build in attractive but challenging neighborhoods. Furthermore, how can a successful operator branch out into new businesses? When should the operator form joint ventures to help them achieve their strategic ends? Analytical tools discussed include: development metrics, impact of financing on projects, as well as analytical methods to forecast market demand.
Swot Analysis of "Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living" written by Charles F Wu, Joseph Beyer includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Acuity Living facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living casestudy better are - – increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, wage bills are increasing, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing transportation and logistics costs, geopolitical disruptions,
technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Acuity Living, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Acuity Living 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 Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Acuity Living
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 Acuity Living
Strengths Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Acuity Living in Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living Harvard Business Review case study are -
Training and development
– Acuity Living has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Acuity Living 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 Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High brand equity
– Acuity Living has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Acuity Living to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Learning organization
- Acuity Living 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 Acuity Living is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Finance & Accounting field
– Acuity Living 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 Acuity Living in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Organizational Resilience of Acuity Living
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Acuity Living 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
– Acuity Living has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Acuity Living 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Acuity Living is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Analytics focus
– Acuity Living 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 F Wu, Joseph Beyer 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.
Strong track record of project management
– Acuity Living is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Acuity Living is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living 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.
Weaknesses Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Acuity Living 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. Acuity Living 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Acuity Living 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Charles F Wu, Joseph Beyer suggests that, Acuity Living 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living, is just above the industry average. Acuity Living 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Acuity Living 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 - Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Acuity Living is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Finance & Accounting segment. Acuity Living needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Acuity Living to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Acuity Living 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Acuity Living 's lucrative customers.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living 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 Acuity Living has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Acuity Living 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living, it seems that the employees of Acuity Living 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 Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living | 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 Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Acuity Living can develop new processes and procedures in Finance & Accounting 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
– Acuity Living 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Acuity Living 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Acuity Living 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Acuity Living 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.
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 Acuity Living in the consumer business. Now Acuity Living can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Acuity Living 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, Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Acuity Living 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 Acuity Living to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Acuity Living to increase its market reach. Acuity Living 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Acuity Living 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Acuity Living can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living 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.
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. Acuity Living can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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 Acuity Living 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.
Threats Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living are -
Regulatory challenges
– Acuity Living 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.
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.
Environmental challenges
– Acuity Living 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. Acuity Living can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry.
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 Acuity Living in the Finance & Accounting 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 Acuity Living with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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. Acuity Living 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Acuity Living in the Finance & Accounting industry. The Finance & Accounting 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.
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. Acuity Living can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Acuity Living 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 Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living .
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Acuity Living.
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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Acuity Living 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.
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 Acuity Living business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living 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 Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living 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 Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living 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 Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living 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 Making Room for the Baby Boom: Senior Living 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 Acuity Living needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.