Delineates how a for-profit health services business was created. Focuses on sources of financing, the impact of Medicare reimbursement, and Stark laws against fraud and abuse.
Swot Analysis of "HealthSouth Corp. (A)" written by Regina E. Herzlinger, Ivan Cheung includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Healthsouth Delineates facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in HealthSouth Corp. (A) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Ethics and Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the HealthSouth Corp. (A) casestudy better are - – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, geopolitical disruptions, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
increasing commodity prices, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of HealthSouth Corp. (A)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in HealthSouth Corp. (A) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Healthsouth Delineates, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Healthsouth Delineates 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 HealthSouth Corp. (A) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in HealthSouth Corp. (A) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Healthsouth Delineates
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field.
4. Making a Innovation & Entrepreneurship topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Healthsouth Delineates
Strengths HealthSouth Corp. (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Healthsouth Delineates in HealthSouth Corp. (A) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Training and development
– Healthsouth Delineates has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in HealthSouth Corp. (A) 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Healthsouth Delineates in the sector have low bargaining power. HealthSouth Corp. (A) has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Healthsouth Delineates to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Healthsouth Delineates
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Healthsouth Delineates does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Healthsouth Delineates 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 HealthSouth Corp. (A) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Healthsouth Delineates 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Healthsouth Delineates has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Healthsouth Delineates 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Healthsouth Delineates is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in HealthSouth Corp. (A) 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.
Ability to lead change in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field
– Healthsouth Delineates 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 Healthsouth Delineates in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Digital Transformation in Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Healthsouth Delineates digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Healthsouth Delineates 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the HealthSouth Corp. (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.
Learning organization
- Healthsouth Delineates 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 Healthsouth Delineates is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in HealthSouth Corp. (A) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Healthsouth Delineates is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in HealthSouth Corp. (A) Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Weaknesses HealthSouth Corp. (A) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of HealthSouth Corp. (A) are -
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study HealthSouth Corp. (A), it seems that the employees of Healthsouth Delineates 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Healthsouth Delineates has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Healthsouth Delineates 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.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Healthsouth Delineates 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study HealthSouth Corp. (A), it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Healthsouth Delineates has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study HealthSouth Corp. (A) 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 HealthSouth Corp. (A) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Healthsouth Delineates is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Healthsouth Delineates 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. Healthsouth Delineates 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Healthsouth Delineates products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Healthsouth Delineates 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 HealthSouth Corp. (A) 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 Healthsouth Delineates 's lucrative customers.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Healthsouth Delineates, firm in the HBR case study HealthSouth Corp. (A) needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Opportunities HealthSouth Corp. (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 HealthSouth Corp. (A) are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Healthsouth Delineates can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Healthsouth Delineates in the consumer business. Now Healthsouth Delineates can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Buying journey improvements
– Healthsouth Delineates can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. HealthSouth Corp. (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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Healthsouth Delineates can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Healthsouth Delineates operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Healthsouth Delineates 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 Innovation & Entrepreneurship segment.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Healthsouth Delineates can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Healthsouth Delineates 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.
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 Healthsouth Delineates 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Healthsouth Delineates can develop new processes and procedures in Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Healthsouth Delineates 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Healthsouth Delineates 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. Healthsouth Delineates 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Healthsouth Delineates to increase its market reach. Healthsouth Delineates 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Healthsouth Delineates 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, HealthSouth Corp. (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.
Threats HealthSouth Corp. (A) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study HealthSouth Corp. (A) are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Healthsouth Delineates 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.
Environmental challenges
– Healthsouth Delineates 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. Healthsouth Delineates can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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. Healthsouth Delineates needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study HealthSouth Corp. (A), Healthsouth Delineates may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Innovation & Entrepreneurship .
Regulatory challenges
– Healthsouth Delineates 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 Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry regulations.
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. Healthsouth Delineates 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Healthsouth Delineates has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Healthsouth Delineates needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Innovation & Entrepreneurship field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Healthsouth Delineates can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Healthsouth Delineates business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Healthsouth Delineates with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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 Healthsouth Delineates in the Innovation & Entrepreneurship sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
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 Healthsouth Delineates.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of HealthSouth Corp. (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 HealthSouth Corp. (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 HealthSouth Corp. (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 HealthSouth Corp. (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 HealthSouth Corp. (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 Healthsouth Delineates needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
