Eukedos (EUKE) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Eukedos (Italy)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Eukedos is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is increasing trade war between United States & China, geopolitical disruptions, there is backlash against globalization, wage bills are increasing, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, technology disruption, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Eukedos

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Eukedos can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Eukedos, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Eukedos 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Eukedos can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Eukedos
2. Improving business portfolio management of Eukedos
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Italy
4. Making a Healthcare Facilities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Eukedos

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Strengths of Eukedos | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Eukedos are -

Successful track record of launching new products

– Eukedos has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Eukedos 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.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Eukedos 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.

Analytics focus

– Eukedos 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 Italy 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.

Sustainable margins compare to other players in Healthcare Facilities industry

– Eukedos has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Eukedos to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Healthcare Facilities industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Eukedos to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.

Innovation driven organization

– Eukedos is one of the most innovative firm in Healthcare Facilities sector.

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Eukedos 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.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Eukedos 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.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Eukedos is one of the leading players in the Healthcare Facilities industry in Italy. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Italy. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.

High brand equity

– Eukedos has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Eukedos to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.

Highly skilled collaborators

– Eukedos 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 Eukedos have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.

Learning organization

- Eukedos 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 Eukedos is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Eukedos emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Eukedos has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Eukedos 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.

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Weaknesses of Eukedos | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Eukedos are -

Slow decision making process

– As mentioned earlier in the report, Eukedos 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. Eukedos 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.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Eukedos is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Eukedos to provide better information regarding Healthcare Facilities products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Capital Spending Reduction

– Even during the low interest decade, Eukedos 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.

Low market penetration in new markets

– Outside its home market of Italy, Eukedos needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.

High bargaining power of channel partners in Healthcare Facilities industry

– because of the regulatory requirements in Italy, Eukedos 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 Healthcare Facilities industry.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Eukedos has high operating costs in the Healthcare Facilities industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Eukedos lucrative customers.

Employees’ less understanding of Eukedos strategy

– From the outside it seems that the employees of Eukedos 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.

Slow to strategic competitive environment developments

– As Eukedos 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.

High cash cycle compare to competitors

Eukedos 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.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Eukedos is just above the Healthcare Facilities industry average. It 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.

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 Eukedos supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Eukedos is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Eukedos vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.

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Eukedos Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Eukedos are -

Identify volunteer opportunities

– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Eukedos can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19

– consumer behavior has changed in the Healthcare Facilities industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Eukedos 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. Eukedos 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

– Eukedos 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.

Building a culture of innovation

– managers at Eukedos 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.

Leveraging digital technologies

– Eukedos 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.

Loyalty marketing

– Eukedos 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.

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of Eukedos has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Healthcare Facilities industry. This can help Eukedos to build a more holistic ecosystem for Eukedos products in the Healthcare Facilities industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Eukedos 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 Eukedos to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

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 Eukedos 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.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Eukedos has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Healthcare Facilities sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Eukedos to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Eukedos to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

Redefining models of collaboration and team work

– As explained in the weaknesses section, Eukedos is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Eukedos 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.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Eukedos 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.

Developing new processes and practices

– Eukedos 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.

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Threats Eukedos External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Eukedos are -

Environmental challenges

– Eukedos 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. Eukedos can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Healthcare Facilities industry.

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. Eukedos needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Healthcare Facilities industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Healthcare Facilities industry are lowering. It can presents Eukedos 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 international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Eukedos 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 Eukedos prominent markets.

Learning curve for new practices

– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Eukedos 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.

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 Eukedos in the Healthcare Facilities sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

Consumer confidence and its impact on Eukedos 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.

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Eukedos 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.

Easy access to finance

– Easy access to finance in Healthcare Facilities industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Eukedos can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.

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.

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.

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. Eukedos 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.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Eukedos 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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Eukedos Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Eukedos 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 Eukedos 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 Eukedos 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 Eukedos 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 Eukedos needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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