Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality
For generations, the model for receiving health care services in the developed world has been straightforward. It starts with showing your insurance card at the reception desk and ends with a 10-minute examination/discussion with a doctor. In developing countries, this model is structurally untenable: according to the World Health Organization, there is a global shortage of four million health care providers, and in 57 countries, this amounts to a crisis. The authors present several new models for delivering health care services in developing countries that use ICT (information and communication technologies)-i.e., cell phones, tablets and computers. It is only a matter of time, they say, before these models spread to more resource-rich settings.
Authors :: John A. MacDonald, Anita M. McGahan, Will Mitchell
Swot Analysis of "Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality" written by John A. MacDonald, Anita M. McGahan, Will Mitchell includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Health Care facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality casestudy better are - – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , wage bills are increasing, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing energy prices,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Health Care, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Health Care 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 Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Health Care
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 Health Care
Strengths Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Health Care in Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality Harvard Business Review case study are -
Training and development
– Health Care has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Health Care has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Health Care 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.
Learning organization
- Health Care 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 Health Care is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Diverse revenue streams
– Health Care is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality 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.
Analytics focus
– Health Care 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 John A. MacDonald, Anita M. McGahan, Will Mitchell can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Health Care 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Health Care is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Health Care 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Strategy & Execution industry
– Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Health Care to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Health Care to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Strategy & Execution field
– Health Care 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 Health Care in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management
– Health Care 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
– Health Care is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Weaknesses Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality are -
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality, 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Health Care, firm in the HBR case study Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, John A. MacDonald, Anita M. McGahan, Will Mitchell suggests that, Health Care 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 decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Health Care 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. Health Care 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Health Care 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality HBR case study mentions - Health Care 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality 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 Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Health Care is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality, is just above the industry average. Health Care 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Health Care is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Strategy & Execution segment. Health Care needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Health Care to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of Health Care products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Health Care needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Health Care 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 - Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Opportunities Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality | 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 Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality are -
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 Health Care 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Health Care 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, Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality, 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 Health Care to increase its market reach. Health Care 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Health Care 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 Health Care 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
– Health Care 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Health Care 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Health Care is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality 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 Health Care 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Strategy & Execution industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Health Care can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Health Care 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
– Health Care 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 Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Health Care to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Loyalty marketing
– Health Care 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.
Threats Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Health Care 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Health Care 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 Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality .
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Health Care 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 Health Care business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Health Care 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. Health Care 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.
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 Health Care in the Strategy & Execution sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Health Care 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. Health Care can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry.
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. Health Care needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Strategy & Execution industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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. Health Care 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.
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 Health Care.
Increasing wage structure of Health Care
– 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 Health Care.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality 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 Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality 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 Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality 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 Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality 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 Health Care Access for All: Making the Dream a Reality 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 Health Care needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
