SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Zeria Pharmaceutical (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Zeria Pharmaceutical is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing commodity prices, technology disruption, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing energy prices,
increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Zeria Pharmaceutical
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Zeria Pharmaceutical can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Zeria Pharmaceutical, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Zeria Pharmaceutical
2. Improving business portfolio management of Zeria Pharmaceutical
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Biotechnology & Drugs sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Zeria Pharmaceutical
Strengths of Zeria Pharmaceutical | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Zeria Pharmaceutical are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Zeria Pharmaceutical has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
Organizational Resilience of Zeria Pharmaceutical
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Zeria Pharmaceutical does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– Zeria Pharmaceutical is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Training and development
– Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
High brand equity
– Zeria Pharmaceutical has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Zeria Pharmaceutical to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Zeria Pharmaceutical has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Zeria Pharmaceutical is present in almost all the verticals within the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This has provided Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
Ability to lead change in Biotechnology & Drugs
– Zeria Pharmaceutical is one of the leading players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in Japan. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in Japan but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Zeria Pharmaceutical in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– Zeria Pharmaceutical has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Zeria Pharmaceutical to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Zeria Pharmaceutical to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Zeria Pharmaceutical in Biotechnology & Drugs industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Weaknesses of Zeria Pharmaceutical | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Zeria Pharmaceutical are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Zeria Pharmaceutical is planning to shift buying processes online.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Zeria Pharmaceutical 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. Zeria Pharmaceutical should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Zeria Pharmaceutical 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. Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 strategic competitive environment developments
– As Zeria Pharmaceutical is one of the leading players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in last five years.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical lucrative customers.
High dependence on Zeria Pharmaceutical ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Zeria Pharmaceutical, in the dynamic environment of Biotechnology & Drugs industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Zeria Pharmaceutical has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Need for greater diversity
– Zeria Pharmaceutical has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Lack of clear differentiation of Zeria Pharmaceutical products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Zeria Pharmaceutical needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Zeria Pharmaceutical Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Zeria Pharmaceutical are -
Developing new processes and practices
– Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Zeria Pharmaceutical to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Zeria Pharmaceutical 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
– Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Zeria Pharmaceutical can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Biotechnology & Drugs sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Zeria Pharmaceutical is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
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. Zeria Pharmaceutical 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. Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical to increase its market reach. Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Zeria Pharmaceutical are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Zeria Pharmaceutical has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Zeria Pharmaceutical is facing in Biotechnology & Drugs sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Zeria Pharmaceutical may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
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. Zeria Pharmaceutical 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.
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 Zeria Pharmaceutical business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Zeria Pharmaceutical 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. Zeria Pharmaceutical can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Biotechnology & Drugs 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. Zeria Pharmaceutical needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Biotechnology & Drugs 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.
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. Zeria Pharmaceutical can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Biotechnology & Drugs industry are lowering. It can presents Zeria Pharmaceutical with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Biotechnology & Drugs 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical in the Biotechnology & Drugs sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical 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 Zeria Pharmaceutical needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.