SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Anchiano Therapeutics (Israel)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Anchiano Therapeutics is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing energy prices, technology disruption, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing commodity prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Anchiano Therapeutics
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Anchiano Therapeutics can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Anchiano Therapeutics, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Anchiano Therapeutics 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 Anchiano Therapeutics can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Anchiano Therapeutics
2. Improving business portfolio management of Anchiano Therapeutics
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Israel
4. Making a Biotechnology & Drugs sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Anchiano Therapeutics
Strengths of Anchiano Therapeutics | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Anchiano Therapeutics are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Anchiano Therapeutics comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Biotechnology & Drugs 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.
Ability to lead change in Biotechnology & Drugs
– Anchiano Therapeutics is one of the leading players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in Israel. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in Israel but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Anchiano Therapeutics in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Anchiano Therapeutics is one of the leading players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in Israel. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Israel. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Learning organization
- Anchiano Therapeutics 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 Anchiano Therapeutics is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Anchiano Therapeutics emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– Anchiano Therapeutics is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Anchiano Therapeutics in the Healthcare sector have low bargaining power. Anchiano Therapeutics has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Anchiano Therapeutics to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– Anchiano Therapeutics is one of the most innovative firm in Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
Training and development
– Anchiano Therapeutics 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.
Analytics focus
– Anchiano Therapeutics 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry. The technology infrastructure of Israel 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Anchiano Therapeutics has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Anchiano Therapeutics staying ahead in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Anchiano Therapeutics has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Biotechnology & Drugs industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Anchiano Therapeutics have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Anchiano Therapeutics are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Anchiano Therapeutics | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Anchiano Therapeutics are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Anchiano Therapeutics has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Anchiano Therapeutics has high operating costs in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Anchiano Therapeutics lucrative customers.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Anchiano Therapeutics, in the dynamic environment of Biotechnology & Drugs industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Anchiano Therapeutics has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Anchiano Therapeutics 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry using digital technology.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Anchiano Therapeutics has some of the most successful models in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Anchiano Therapeutics should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Anchiano Therapeutics needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Anchiano Therapeutics can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Anchiano Therapeutics is planning to shift buying processes online.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Anchiano Therapeutics 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, Anchiano Therapeutics 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Anchiano Therapeutics has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry over the last five years. Anchiano Therapeutics 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 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 Anchiano Therapeutics supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Anchiano Therapeutics is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Anchiano Therapeutics vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High dependence on Anchiano Therapeutics ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Anchiano Therapeutics still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Biotechnology & Drugs industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Anchiano Therapeutics has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Anchiano Therapeutics Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Anchiano Therapeutics are -
Leveraging digital technologies
– Anchiano Therapeutics 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Anchiano Therapeutics 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. Anchiano Therapeutics can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Anchiano Therapeutics to increase its market reach. Anchiano Therapeutics will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Anchiano Therapeutics has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Biotechnology & Drugs sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Anchiano Therapeutics to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Anchiano Therapeutics 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 Anchiano Therapeutics has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This can help Anchiano Therapeutics to build a more holistic ecosystem for Anchiano Therapeutics products in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Buying journey improvements
– Anchiano Therapeutics can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Biotechnology & Drugs 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Anchiano Therapeutics is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Anchiano Therapeutics can utilize new technology in the field of Biotechnology & Drugs industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Anchiano Therapeutics can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Anchiano Therapeutics in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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 Anchiano Therapeutics to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Developing new processes and practices
– Anchiano Therapeutics can develop new processes and procedures in Biotechnology & Drugs 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Anchiano Therapeutics 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 Anchiano Therapeutics to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Anchiano Therapeutics 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.
Threats Anchiano Therapeutics External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Anchiano Therapeutics are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Anchiano Therapeutics has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Anchiano Therapeutics needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Biotechnology & Drugs 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Anchiano Therapeutics 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry regulations.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Anchiano Therapeutics is facing in Biotechnology & Drugs sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Anchiano Therapeutics.
Increasing wage structure of Anchiano Therapeutics
– 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 Anchiano Therapeutics.
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 Anchiano Therapeutics in the Biotechnology & Drugs sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Anchiano Therapeutics 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 Anchiano Therapeutics prominent markets.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Biotechnology & Drugs industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Anchiano Therapeutics can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry are lowering. It can presents Anchiano Therapeutics with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Anchiano Therapeutics 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.
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. Anchiano Therapeutics needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Anchiano Therapeutics 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Anchiano Therapeutics Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Anchiano Therapeutics 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 Anchiano Therapeutics 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 Anchiano Therapeutics 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 Anchiano Therapeutics 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 Anchiano Therapeutics needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.