SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Fortis Healthcare (India)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Fortis Healthcare is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – technology disruption, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion,
geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Fortis Healthcare
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Fortis Healthcare can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Fortis Healthcare, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Fortis Healthcare 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 Fortis Healthcare can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Fortis Healthcare
2. Improving business portfolio management of Fortis Healthcare
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in India
4. Making a Healthcare Facilities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Fortis Healthcare
Strengths of Fortis Healthcare | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Fortis Healthcare are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Fortis Healthcare has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Healthcare Facilities industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Fortis Healthcare have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Fortis Healthcare 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.
High brand equity
– Fortis Healthcare has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Fortis Healthcare to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Fortis Healthcare comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Healthcare Facilities 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Fortis Healthcare is present in almost all the verticals within the Healthcare Facilities industry. This has provided Fortis Healthcare 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Fortis Healthcare has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Fortis Healthcare staying ahead in the Healthcare Facilities industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Organizational Resilience of Fortis Healthcare
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Fortis Healthcare does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Fortis Healthcare in the Healthcare sector have low bargaining power. Fortis Healthcare has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Fortis Healthcare to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to lead change in Healthcare Facilities
– Fortis Healthcare is one of the leading players in the Healthcare Facilities industry in India. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Healthcare Facilities industry in India but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Fortis Healthcare in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Fortis Healthcare has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Fortis Healthcare 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Healthcare Facilities industry
– Fortis Healthcare has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Fortis Healthcare to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Healthcare Facilities industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Fortis Healthcare to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Fortis Healthcare 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 Fortis Healthcare is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Fortis Healthcare emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses of Fortis Healthcare | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Fortis Healthcare are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Fortis Healthcare has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Healthcare Facilities industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Employees’ less understanding of Fortis Healthcare strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Fortis Healthcare 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.
Lack of clear differentiation of Fortis Healthcare products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Fortis Healthcare needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Fortis Healthcare, in the dynamic environment of Healthcare Facilities industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Fortis Healthcare has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Fortis Healthcare has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Healthcare Facilities industry over the last five years. Fortis Healthcare 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Healthcare Facilities industry, Fortis Healthcare 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.
Skills based hiring in Healthcare Facilities industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Fortis Healthcare has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Fortis Healthcare, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Healthcare Facilities industry. 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.
High dependence on Fortis Healthcare ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Fortis Healthcare still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Healthcare Facilities industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Fortis Healthcare has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Fortis Healthcare has some of the most successful models in the Healthcare Facilities industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Fortis Healthcare should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
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 Fortis Healthcare supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Fortis Healthcare is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Fortis Healthcare vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Fortis Healthcare Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Fortis Healthcare are -
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Healthcare Facilities industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Fortis Healthcare can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Fortis Healthcare 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 Fortis Healthcare to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Loyalty marketing
– Fortis Healthcare 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Fortis Healthcare is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Fortis Healthcare can utilize new technology in the field of Healthcare Facilities industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Healthcare Facilities industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Fortis Healthcare 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. Fortis Healthcare 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Fortis Healthcare can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Fortis Healthcare 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Fortis Healthcare can develop new processes and procedures in Healthcare Facilities 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Fortis Healthcare 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 in Healthcare Facilities industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Fortis Healthcare in the Healthcare Facilities industry. Now Fortis Healthcare can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Fortis Healthcare 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 Healthcare Facilities industry.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Fortis Healthcare 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 Fortis Healthcare 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.
Threats Fortis Healthcare External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Fortis Healthcare are -
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Fortis Healthcare is facing in Healthcare Facilities sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Fortis Healthcare 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 Healthcare Facilities industry and other sectors.
Regulatory challenges
– Fortis Healthcare 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 Healthcare Facilities industry regulations.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Fortis Healthcare 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.
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 Fortis Healthcare.
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 Fortis Healthcare business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Fortis Healthcare 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 Fortis Healthcare prominent markets.
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. Fortis Healthcare needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Healthcare Facilities industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
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 Fortis Healthcare in the Healthcare Facilities sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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. Fortis Healthcare 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Fortis Healthcare in Healthcare Facilities industry. The Healthcare Facilities 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.
Increasing wage structure of Fortis Healthcare
– 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 Fortis Healthcare.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Fortis Healthcare Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Fortis Healthcare 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 Fortis Healthcare 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 Fortis Healthcare 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 Fortis Healthcare 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 Fortis Healthcare needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.