Tom Baker Cancer Centre SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Leadership & Managing People
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Tom Baker Cancer Centre
The director for the Tom Baker Cancer Centre (TBCC) and vice-president of the Alberta Cancer Board (ACB) took a moment to reflect on the past six months. He had assumed the leadership of the TBCC in December 2006. Alberta Health & Wellness had created an ambitious provincial vision for cancer in which the director would play a key role. The director recognized that it would be difficult to gain buy-in from the different stakeholders because they were used to a different way of operating. Before moving forward, the director wanted to have several discussions with ACB, his management team and the front-line staff, and present to them some preliminary objectives.
Swot Analysis of "Tom Baker Cancer Centre" written by Murray J. Bryant, Eileen Pepler includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Cancer Acb facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Tom Baker Cancer Centre case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Decision making and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Tom Baker Cancer Centre casestudy better are - – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, wage bills are increasing, technology disruption, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Tom Baker Cancer Centre
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Tom Baker Cancer Centre case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Cancer Acb, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Cancer Acb 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 Tom Baker Cancer Centre can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Tom Baker Cancer Centre case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Cancer Acb
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Cancer Acb
Strengths Tom Baker Cancer Centre | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Cancer Acb in Tom Baker Cancer Centre Harvard Business Review case study are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Tom Baker Cancer Centre firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Cancer Acb to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Cancer Acb to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Cancer Acb 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 Tom Baker Cancer Centre - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Digital Transformation in Leadership & Managing People segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Cancer Acb digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Cancer Acb 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.
Organizational Resilience of Cancer Acb
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Cancer Acb does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Cancer Acb is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Tom Baker Cancer Centre are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Learning organization
- Cancer Acb 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 Cancer Acb is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Tom Baker Cancer Centre Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Cancer Acb is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Tom Baker Cancer Centre Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Cancer Acb in the sector have low bargaining power. Tom Baker Cancer Centre has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Cancer Acb to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Strong track record of project management
– Cancer Acb is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Tom Baker Cancer Centre 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Cancer Acb in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Analytics focus
– Cancer Acb 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 Murray J. Bryant, Eileen Pepler 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 Tom Baker Cancer Centre | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Tom Baker Cancer Centre are -
Need for greater diversity
– Cancer Acb 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the segment, Cancer Acb 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.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Tom Baker Cancer Centre, it seems that the employees of Cancer Acb 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.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Cancer Acb 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 to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Cancer Acb is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Tom Baker Cancer Centre can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Cancer Acb is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Cancer Acb needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Cancer Acb to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Tom Baker Cancer Centre 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 Cancer Acb 's lucrative customers.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Tom Baker Cancer Centre HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Cancer Acb has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Cancer Acb 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Cancer Acb 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. Cancer Acb 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Tom Baker Cancer Centre 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 Tom Baker Cancer Centre can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Cancer Acb is planning to shift buying processes online.
Opportunities Tom Baker Cancer Centre | 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 Tom Baker Cancer Centre are -
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Cancer Acb can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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 Cancer Acb in the consumer business. Now Cancer Acb can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Cancer Acb 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Cancer Acb 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, Tom Baker Cancer Centre, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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. Cancer Acb 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 Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Cancer Acb 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. Cancer Acb 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
– Cancer Acb 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Cancer Acb in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People 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, Cancer Acb can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Cancer Acb operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Cancer Acb 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 Cancer Acb to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Buying journey improvements
– Cancer Acb can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Tom Baker Cancer Centre 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Cancer Acb 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 Leadership & Managing People segment.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Cancer Acb has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Cancer Acb to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Tom Baker Cancer Centre case study. Cancer Acb can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Tom Baker Cancer Centre External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Tom Baker Cancer Centre are -
Increasing wage structure of Cancer Acb
– 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 Cancer Acb.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Cancer Acb 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Cancer Acb in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People 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 Cancer Acb with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Cancer Acb 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 Leadership & Managing People industry regulations.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Cancer Acb is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Cancer Acb in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Cancer Acb 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Cancer Acb 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 Tom Baker Cancer Centre .
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Leadership & Managing People field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Cancer Acb can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Cancer Acb.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Cancer Acb has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Cancer Acb needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Leadership & Managing People 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 Tom Baker Cancer Centre 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 Tom Baker Cancer Centre 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 Tom Baker Cancer Centre 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 Tom Baker Cancer Centre 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 Tom Baker Cancer Centre 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 Cancer Acb needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
