Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
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Case Study Description of Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals?
Sometimes, friendly acquisitions feel more like friendly fire. After all, a job lost is a job lost. Such was Lek Pharmaceuticals' concern over its recent sale to a larger interest. Based in Slovenia, the home-grown industry feared losses of employment, identity, and creative freedom. Lek employed people in 20 countries, so even the slightest change would have loud repercussions. But Lek's strategic planning director was charged with just that: change. How was he to conduct this transition? And wasn't there a pill for this?
Swot Analysis of "Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals?" written by Lynn Isabella includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Lek Pharmaceuticals facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, and Global Business.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? casestudy better are - – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing commodity prices,
talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals?
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Lek Pharmaceuticals, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Lek Pharmaceuticals 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 Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Lek Pharmaceuticals
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Global Business field.
4. Making a Global Business topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Lek Pharmaceuticals
Strengths Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Lek Pharmaceuticals in Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? Harvard Business Review case study are -
Organizational Resilience of Lek Pharmaceuticals
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Lek Pharmaceuticals does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Global Business industry
– Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Lek Pharmaceuticals to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Global Business industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Lek Pharmaceuticals to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Ability to lead change in Global Business field
– Lek Pharmaceuticals 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 Lek Pharmaceuticals in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Lek Pharmaceuticals is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Innovation driven organization
– Lek Pharmaceuticals is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Digital Transformation in Global Business segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Lek Pharmaceuticals digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Lek Pharmaceuticals has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Analytics focus
– Lek Pharmaceuticals 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 Lynn Isabella 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.
Learning organization
- Lek Pharmaceuticals 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 Lek Pharmaceuticals is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Lek Pharmaceuticals in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Lek Pharmaceuticals in the sector have low bargaining power. Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Lek Pharmaceuticals to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Training and development
– Lek Pharmaceuticals has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Lek Pharmaceuticals is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? 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 Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? are -
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals?, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Global Business strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Lek Pharmaceuticals 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? 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 Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Lek Pharmaceuticals is planning to shift buying processes online.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Lek Pharmaceuticals 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 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 Lek Pharmaceuticals supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals?, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Lek Pharmaceuticals vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Lack of clear differentiation of Lek Pharmaceuticals products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Lek Pharmaceuticals needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Lynn Isabella suggests that, Lek Pharmaceuticals 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Lek Pharmaceuticals 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Lek Pharmaceuticals 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. Lek Pharmaceuticals 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Lek Pharmaceuticals, firm in the HBR case study Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? 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 Lek Pharmaceuticals 's lucrative customers.
Opportunities Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? | 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 Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Lek Pharmaceuticals 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Lek Pharmaceuticals 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 Lek Pharmaceuticals to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Developing new processes and practices
– Lek Pharmaceuticals can develop new processes and procedures in Global Business 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Lek Pharmaceuticals 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Lek Pharmaceuticals 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Lek Pharmaceuticals 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Lek Pharmaceuticals to increase its market reach. Lek Pharmaceuticals 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 Lek Pharmaceuticals 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 Global Business segment.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Lek Pharmaceuticals 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 Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Lek Pharmaceuticals to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Lek Pharmaceuticals has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Lek Pharmaceuticals to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? case study. Lek Pharmaceuticals can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Lek Pharmaceuticals in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Global Business segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Lek Pharmaceuticals can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Lek Pharmaceuticals operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Global Business sector.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Lek Pharmaceuticals is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? 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.
Threats Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? are -
Regulatory challenges
– Lek Pharmaceuticals 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 Global Business industry regulations.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals?, Lek Pharmaceuticals may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Global Business .
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Lek Pharmaceuticals 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 Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? .
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Lek Pharmaceuticals 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.
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 Lek Pharmaceuticals in the Global Business sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Lek Pharmaceuticals is facing in Global Business sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Increasing wage structure of Lek Pharmaceuticals
– 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 Lek Pharmaceuticals.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Lek Pharmaceuticals has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Global Business industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Lek Pharmaceuticals needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Global Business 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Lek Pharmaceuticals in the Global Business industry. The Global Business 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Lek Pharmaceuticals with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Environmental challenges
– Lek Pharmaceuticals 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. Lek Pharmaceuticals can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Global Business industry.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Lek Pharmaceuticals 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? 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 Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? 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 Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? 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 Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? 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 Maintaining Identity After Acquisition: What's Next for Lek Pharmaceuticals? 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 Lek Pharmaceuticals needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.