SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Smiles Inclusive (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Smiles Inclusive is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, increasing energy prices, geopolitical disruptions, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, wage bills are increasing,
customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Smiles Inclusive can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Smiles Inclusive, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Smiles Inclusive 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 Smiles Inclusive can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Smiles Inclusive
2. Improving business portfolio management of Smiles Inclusive
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Healthcare Facilities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Smiles Inclusive
Strengths of Smiles Inclusive | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Smiles Inclusive are -
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Healthcare Facilities industry
– Smiles Inclusive has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Smiles Inclusive to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Healthcare Facilities industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Smiles Inclusive to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Smiles Inclusive has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Smiles Inclusive 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Smiles Inclusive in the Healthcare sector have low bargaining power. Smiles Inclusive has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Smiles Inclusive to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Smiles Inclusive is one of the leading players in the Healthcare Facilities industry in Australia. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Australia. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Innovation driven organization
– Smiles Inclusive is one of the most innovative firm in Healthcare Facilities sector.
Ability to lead change in Healthcare Facilities
– Smiles Inclusive is one of the leading players in the Healthcare Facilities industry in Australia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Healthcare Facilities industry in Australia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Smiles Inclusive in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Smiles Inclusive in Healthcare Facilities industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Smiles Inclusive has one of the best training and development program in Healthcare industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Strong track record of project management in the Healthcare Facilities industry
– Smiles Inclusive is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Smiles Inclusive 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Smiles Inclusive 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 Smiles Inclusive have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Analytics focus
– Smiles Inclusive 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 Healthcare Facilities industry. The technology infrastructure of Australia is also helping 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 of Smiles Inclusive | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Smiles Inclusive are -
Products dominated business model
– Even though Smiles Inclusive 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. Smiles Inclusive should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Employees’ less understanding of Smiles Inclusive strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Smiles Inclusive 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Smiles Inclusive, in the dynamic environment of Healthcare Facilities industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Smiles Inclusive 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, Smiles Inclusive 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. Smiles Inclusive 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.
High dependence on Smiles Inclusive ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Smiles Inclusive 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 Smiles Inclusive has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Smiles Inclusive is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Healthcare Facilities industry, but Smiles Inclusive needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Smiles Inclusive to focus more on services in the Healthcare Facilities industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Smiles Inclusive 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.
Skills based hiring in Healthcare Facilities industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Smiles Inclusive 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 strategic competitive environment developments
– As Smiles Inclusive is one of the leading players in the Healthcare Facilities industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Healthcare Facilities industry in last five years.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Smiles Inclusive 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 Healthcare Facilities industry using digital technology.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Smiles Inclusive needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Healthcare Facilities industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Smiles Inclusive can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Smiles Inclusive is planning to shift buying processes online.
Smiles Inclusive Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Smiles Inclusive are -
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Smiles Inclusive can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Smiles Inclusive operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Healthcare Facilities sector.
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. Smiles Inclusive 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. Smiles Inclusive 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Smiles Inclusive can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Healthcare Facilities industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It 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.
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. Smiles Inclusive can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Developing new processes and practices
– Smiles Inclusive 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Smiles Inclusive in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Healthcare Facilities industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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 Smiles Inclusive in the Healthcare Facilities industry. Now Smiles Inclusive 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 Smiles Inclusive can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Loyalty marketing
– Smiles Inclusive 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Smiles Inclusive 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.
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 Smiles Inclusive 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Smiles Inclusive has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Healthcare Facilities industry. This can help Smiles Inclusive to build a more holistic ecosystem for Smiles Inclusive products in the Healthcare Facilities industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Smiles Inclusive 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 Smiles Inclusive to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Smiles Inclusive External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Smiles Inclusive are -
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Smiles Inclusive 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 Smiles Inclusive prominent markets.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Smiles Inclusive 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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Smiles Inclusive 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 Healthcare Facilities industry.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Healthcare Facilities industry are lowering. It can presents Smiles Inclusive with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Healthcare Facilities sector.
Increasing wage structure of Smiles Inclusive
– 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 Smiles Inclusive.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Smiles Inclusive is facing in Healthcare Facilities sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Smiles Inclusive 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. Smiles Inclusive can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Healthcare Facilities industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Smiles Inclusive 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.
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 Smiles Inclusive.
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. Smiles Inclusive needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Healthcare Facilities industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Smiles Inclusive 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Smiles Inclusive may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Healthcare Facilities sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Smiles Inclusive Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Smiles Inclusive 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 Smiles Inclusive 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 Smiles Inclusive 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 Smiles Inclusive 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 Smiles Inclusive needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.