Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Technology & Operations
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B)
Once the CABG care path is implemented and other care paths begun, hospital staff and administration examine the resulting data. Further methods of improving care and reducing cost are presented for analysis.
Authors :: Steven C. Wheelwright, Mikelle F. Eastley
Swot Analysis of "Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B)" written by Steven C. Wheelwright, Mikelle F. Eastley includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Cabg Care facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Developing employees, Employee retention, Health, Supply chain and Technology & Operations.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) casestudy better are - – increasing energy prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, technology disruption, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, there is backlash against globalization, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Cabg Care, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Cabg 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 Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Cabg Care
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 Cabg Care
Strengths Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Cabg Care in Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) Harvard Business Review case study are -
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Cabg 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Technology & Operations industry
– Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Cabg Care to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Technology & Operations industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Cabg Care to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High brand equity
– Cabg Care has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Cabg Care to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) 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.
Organizational Resilience of Cabg Care
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Cabg Care does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Strong track record of project management
– Cabg 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Cabg 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.
Training and development
– Cabg Care has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) 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)
– Cabg Care 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 Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Cabg Care is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Cabg Care is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Analytics focus
– Cabg 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 Steven C. Wheelwright, Mikelle F. Eastley 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.
Weaknesses Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) are -
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B), is just above the industry average. Cabg 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Cabg 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 - Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) HBR case study mentions - Cabg 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Cabg Care has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B), 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Cabg Care products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Cabg Care needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) 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 Cabg Care 's lucrative customers.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B), it seems that the employees of Cabg Care 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) 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 Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Cabg Care is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Steven C. Wheelwright, Mikelle F. Eastley suggests that, Cabg 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.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Cabg Care supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B), it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Cabg Care vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Opportunities Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) | 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 Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) are -
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. Cabg Care can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Technology & Operations industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Cabg Care 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. Cabg Care 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Cabg 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Cabg Care can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Cabg 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 Technology & Operations segment.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Cabg Care 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 Cabg Care to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Cabg Care has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Cabg Care to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) case study. Cabg Care can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
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 Cabg 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Cabg 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Cabg 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, Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B), to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Technology & Operations industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Cabg Care can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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 Cabg Care in the consumer business. Now Cabg Care can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Cabg 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 Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Cabg Care to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Cabg Care with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Cabg Care 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.
Environmental challenges
– Cabg 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. Cabg Care can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Technology & Operations industry.
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. Cabg 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.
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 Cabg Care in the Technology & Operations sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. Cabg Care can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
Increasing wage structure of Cabg 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 Cabg Care.
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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Cabg Care is facing in Technology & Operations sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Cabg Care business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Cabg 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Cabg Care has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Technology & Operations industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Cabg Care 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) 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 Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) 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 Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) 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 Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) 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 Massachusetts General Hospital: CABG Surgery (B) 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 Cabg Care needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.