Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Technology & Operations
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A)
Dental Associates of Northern Virginia is one of the largest dental networks in northern Virginia. In this series of two cases, the head administrator is caught between staying abreast with new technology by investing in innovative all-porcelain crown-making machines and holding steadfast to a laggard strategy of wait and see. This choice also aligns with the head administrator making a larger decision of whether to enhance the core competency of his network by developing a complete in-house laboratory or continuing to rely on an expensive, but reliable, outside laboratory for all-porcelain restorations. Together the two cases in the series are rich in concepts dealing with cost, timeliness, quality and flexibility as students are forced to see an operations problem from both patient and doctor perspectives. The cases also consider the ever-changing world of technology and how it impacts a doctor's practice along with an entire network of offices.
Swot Analysis of "Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A)" written by Marie E. Matta includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Dental Virginia facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Operations management, Technology and Technology & Operations.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) casestudy better are - – wage bills are increasing, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, technology disruption, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, geopolitical disruptions, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Dental Virginia, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Dental Virginia 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 Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Dental Virginia
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Technology & Operations field.
4. Making a Technology & Operations topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Dental Virginia
Strengths Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Dental Virginia in Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Dental Virginia 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 Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Dental Virginia is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Organizational Resilience of Dental Virginia
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Dental Virginia does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High brand equity
– Dental Virginia has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Dental Virginia to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Dental Virginia in the sector have low bargaining power. Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Dental Virginia to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Dental Virginia in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Dental Virginia is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Dental Virginia has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Dental Virginia 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Dental Virginia 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 Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Learning organization
- Dental Virginia 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 Dental Virginia is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Dental Virginia 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) 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 Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) are -
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Marie E. Matta suggests that, Dental Virginia 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A), it seems that the employees of Dental Virginia 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A), it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Technology & Operations 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Dental Virginia 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 - Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A), is just above the industry average. Dental Virginia 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Dental Virginia, firm in the HBR case study Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Dental Virginia 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Dental Virginia products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Dental Virginia needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Need for greater diversity
– Dental Virginia 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, Dental Virginia 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A), in the dynamic environment Dental Virginia has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Dental Virginia has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Opportunities Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) | 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 Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) are -
Buying journey improvements
– Dental Virginia can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Dental Virginia 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Dental Virginia 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 Dental Virginia to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Developing new processes and practices
– Dental Virginia can develop new processes and procedures in Technology & Operations 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.
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 Dental Virginia in the consumer business. Now Dental Virginia 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, Dental Virginia 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, Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A), to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Dental Virginia 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Dental Virginia is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Dental Virginia can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Dental Virginia in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Technology & Operations segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Dental Virginia 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 Technology & Operations segment.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Dental Virginia to increase its market reach. Dental Virginia 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Dental Virginia has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Dental Virginia to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) case study. Dental Virginia can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) are -
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 Dental Virginia.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Dental Virginia 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Dental Virginia is facing in Technology & Operations sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Dental Virginia 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 Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) .
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 Dental Virginia business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Dental Virginia in the Technology & Operations industry. The Technology & Operations 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Dental Virginia has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Technology & Operations industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Dental Virginia needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Technology & Operations 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A), Dental Virginia may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Technology & Operations .
Environmental challenges
– Dental Virginia 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. Dental Virginia can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Technology & Operations industry.
Increasing wage structure of Dental Virginia
– 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 Dental Virginia.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Technology & Operations field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Dental Virginia can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Dental Virginia in the Technology & Operations sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Dental Virginia 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) 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 Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) 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 Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) 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 Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) 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 Dental Associates of Northern Virginia (A) 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 Dental Virginia needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
