SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Medical&Biological Laboratories (Japan)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Medical&Biological Laboratories is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing commodity prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, wage bills are increasing,
technology disruption, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Medical&Biological Laboratories
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Medical&Biological Laboratories can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Medical&Biological Laboratories, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 Medical&Biological Laboratories can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Medical&Biological Laboratories
2. Improving business portfolio management of Medical&Biological Laboratories
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Japan
4. Making a Healthcare Facilities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Medical&Biological Laboratories
Strengths of Medical&Biological Laboratories | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Medical&Biological Laboratories are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Medical&Biological Laboratories in the Healthcare sector have low bargaining power. Medical&Biological Laboratories has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Medical&Biological Laboratories to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Medical&Biological Laboratories has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Medical&Biological Laboratories has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Ability to lead change in Healthcare Facilities
– Medical&Biological Laboratories is one of the leading players in the Healthcare Facilities industry in Japan. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Healthcare Facilities industry in Japan but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Medical&Biological Laboratories in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Strong track record of project management in the Healthcare Facilities industry
– Medical&Biological Laboratories is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Learning organization
- Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 Medical&Biological Laboratories is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Medical&Biological Laboratories emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Medical&Biological Laboratories 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
– Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 Japan 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Medical&Biological Laboratories is one of the most innovative firm in Healthcare Facilities sector.
High brand equity
– Medical&Biological Laboratories has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Medical&Biological Laboratories to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Medical&Biological Laboratories is one of the leading players in the Healthcare Facilities industry in Japan. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Japan. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Weaknesses of Medical&Biological Laboratories | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Medical&Biological Laboratories are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Healthcare Facilities industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Japan, Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 cash cycle compare to competitors
Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Japan, Medical&Biological Laboratories needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 Medical&Biological Laboratories can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Medical&Biological Laboratories is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring in Healthcare Facilities industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Medical&Biological Laboratories 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. Medical&Biological Laboratories should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Healthcare Facilities industry, Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Medical&Biological Laboratories strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Medical&Biological Laboratories Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Medical&Biological Laboratories are -
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 Medical&Biological Laboratories to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Medical&Biological Laboratories to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Medical&Biological Laboratories can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Healthcare Facilities 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.
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. Medical&Biological Laboratories 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. Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Medical&Biological Laboratories can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Medical&Biological Laboratories operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Healthcare Facilities sector.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
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. Medical&Biological Laboratories can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 Medical&Biological Laboratories to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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 Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Medical&Biological Laboratories to increase its market reach. Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Medical&Biological Laboratories has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Healthcare Facilities industry. This can help Medical&Biological Laboratories to build a more holistic ecosystem for Medical&Biological Laboratories 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, Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 Medical&Biological Laboratories to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Threats Medical&Biological Laboratories External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Medical&Biological Laboratories are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 Medical&Biological Laboratories.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Medical&Biological Laboratories is facing in Healthcare Facilities sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Medical&Biological Laboratories 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. Medical&Biological Laboratories can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Healthcare Facilities industry.
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. Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
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. Medical&Biological Laboratories can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Medical&Biological Laboratories 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.
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.
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 Medical&Biological Laboratories business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Medical&Biological Laboratories Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 Medical&Biological Laboratories 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 Medical&Biological Laboratories needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.