American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Finance & Accounting
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region
Recounts the financial difficulties and management changes experienced by American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region (NER) during the 1980s. After summarizing industry-wide changes in the collection, testing, and distribution of blood and blood products, the case describes the way in which NER management responded to those changes. The types of changes highlighted include: the transition from non-financial to financial planning and monitoring systems; organizational restructuring; increased dissemination of financial information among line management; and conversion to a cost accounting system based on cost center accountability. The primary teaching objective is to illustrate both the need for and the challenges of changing management control systems in response to changes in an organization's marketplace and strategy. The case reveals various factors that must be considered to implement major control changes including management training, differing management styles, information systems capabilities, corporate culture, and a continually changing market.
Swot Analysis of "American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region" written by Robert L. Simons, Hilary A. Weston includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Blood Ner facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Corporate governance, Health, Reorganization, Social enterprise and Finance & Accounting.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region casestudy better are - – increasing transportation and logistics costs, there is backlash against globalization, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, wage bills are increasing, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
increasing energy prices, technology disruption, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Blood Ner, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Blood Ner 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 American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Blood Ner
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Finance & Accounting field.
4. Making a Finance & Accounting topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Blood Ner
Strengths American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Blood Ner in American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region Harvard Business Review case study are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Blood Ner is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Blood Ner 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Blood Ner is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Blood Ner has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Blood Ner 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.
Learning organization
- Blood Ner 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 Blood Ner is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Finance & Accounting industry
– American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Blood Ner to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Blood Ner to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Blood Ner 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 Robert L. Simons, Hilary A. Weston 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.
Training and development
– Blood Ner has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region 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 Blood Ner in the sector have low bargaining power. American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Blood Ner to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Blood Ner 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 American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Blood Ner in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region are -
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region 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 American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Blood Ner is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Robert L. Simons, Hilary A. Weston suggests that, Blood Ner 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region, is just above the industry average. Blood Ner 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Blood Ner 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. Blood Ner 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 Blood Ner, firm in the HBR case study American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Need for greater diversity
– Blood Ner 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Blood Ner is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Finance & Accounting segment. Blood Ner needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Blood Ner to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Finance & Accounting 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Blood Ner is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Blood Ner 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region, in the dynamic environment Blood Ner has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Blood Ner has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Opportunities American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region | 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 American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Blood Ner 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Blood Ner is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Blood Ner 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 American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Blood Ner 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 Blood Ner has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Blood Ner to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region case study. Blood Ner can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Blood Ner 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 Finance & Accounting segment.
Developing new processes and practices
– Blood Ner can develop new processes and procedures in Finance & Accounting 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.
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 Blood Ner 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Finance & Accounting industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Blood Ner 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. Blood Ner 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
– Blood Ner 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Blood Ner 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.
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 Blood Ner in the consumer business. Now Blood Ner can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Blood Ner can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Blood Ner can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Blood Ner operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Finance & Accounting sector.
Threats American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Blood Ner 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Blood Ner 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 American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region .
Environmental challenges
– Blood Ner 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. Blood Ner can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Finance & Accounting industry.
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 Blood Ner business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Blood Ner in the Finance & Accounting industry. The Finance & Accounting 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Blood Ner is facing in Finance & Accounting sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Blood Ner has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Finance & Accounting industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Blood Ner needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Finance & Accounting 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.
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 Blood Ner in the Finance & Accounting 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Blood Ner 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.
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. Blood Ner needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Finance & Accounting industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Finance & Accounting field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Blood Ner can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Regulatory challenges
– Blood Ner 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 Finance & Accounting industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region 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 American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region 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 American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region 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 American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region 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 American Red Cross Blood Services: Northeast Region 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 Blood Ner needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
