Polar Capital Healthcare (PCGH) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Misc. Financial Services
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Polar Capital Healthcare (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Polar Capital Healthcare is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, there is backlash against globalization, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing commodity prices, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic ,
geopolitical disruptions, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Polar Capital Healthcare
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Polar Capital Healthcare can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Polar Capital Healthcare, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Polar Capital Healthcare can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Polar Capital Healthcare
2. Improving business portfolio management of Polar Capital Healthcare
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Misc. Financial Services sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Polar Capital Healthcare
Strengths of Polar Capital Healthcare | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Polar Capital Healthcare are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Polar Capital Healthcare has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Misc. Financial Services industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Polar Capital Healthcare have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Polar Capital Healthcare is one of the most innovative firm in Misc. Financial Services sector.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Polar Capital Healthcare has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Polar Capital Healthcare staying ahead in the Misc. Financial Services industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management in the Misc. Financial Services industry
– Polar Capital Healthcare is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Analytics focus
– Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Misc. Financial Services industry. The technology infrastructure of United Kingdom 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.
Organizational Resilience of Polar Capital Healthcare
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Polar Capital Healthcare does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Polar Capital Healthcare is one of the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services industry in United Kingdom. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United Kingdom. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Polar Capital Healthcare in the Financial sector have low bargaining power. Polar Capital Healthcare has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Polar Capital Healthcare to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Polar Capital Healthcare in Misc. Financial Services industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Polar Capital Healthcare is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Polar Capital Healthcare emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Polar Capital Healthcare has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Polar Capital Healthcare to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Polar Capital Healthcare is present in almost all the verticals within the Misc. Financial Services industry. This has provided Polar Capital Healthcare 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.
Weaknesses of Polar Capital Healthcare | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Polar Capital Healthcare are -
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Polar Capital Healthcare, in the dynamic environment of Misc. Financial Services industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Polar Capital Healthcare has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Polar Capital Healthcare has high operating costs in the Misc. Financial Services industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Polar Capital Healthcare lucrative customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Polar Capital Healthcare is one of the leading players in the Misc. Financial Services industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Misc. Financial Services industry in last five years.
Need for greater diversity
– Polar Capital Healthcare 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Polar Capital Healthcare is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Misc. Financial Services industry, but Polar Capital Healthcare needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Polar Capital Healthcare to focus more on services in the Misc. Financial Services industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Polar Capital Healthcare has some of the most successful models in the Misc. Financial Services industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Polar Capital Healthcare should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Polar Capital Healthcare, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Misc. Financial Services industry. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Polar Capital Healthcare needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Misc. Financial Services industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Polar Capital Healthcare can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Polar Capital Healthcare is planning to shift buying processes online.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, Polar Capital Healthcare needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Misc. Financial Services industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Misc. Financial Services industry.
High dependence on Polar Capital Healthcare ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Polar Capital Healthcare still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Misc. Financial Services industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Polar Capital Healthcare has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Polar Capital Healthcare Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Polar Capital Healthcare are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Polar Capital Healthcare 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.
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 Polar Capital Healthcare 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Polar Capital Healthcare 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Misc. Financial Services industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Polar Capital Healthcare 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. Polar Capital Healthcare 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Polar Capital Healthcare has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Misc. Financial Services industry. This can help Polar Capital Healthcare to build a more holistic ecosystem for Polar Capital Healthcare products in the Misc. Financial Services industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Polar Capital Healthcare can develop new processes and procedures in Misc. Financial Services industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Polar Capital Healthcare in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Misc. Financial Services industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Polar Capital Healthcare 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
– Polar Capital Healthcare 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Polar Capital Healthcare is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Polar Capital Healthcare can utilize new technology in the field of Misc. Financial Services industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Misc. Financial Services industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Polar Capital Healthcare to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Polar Capital Healthcare External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Polar Capital Healthcare are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Polar Capital Healthcare in Misc. Financial Services industry. The Misc. Financial Services 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.
Environmental challenges
– Polar Capital Healthcare 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. Polar Capital Healthcare can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Misc. Financial Services industry.
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 Polar Capital Healthcare business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Polar Capital Healthcare is facing in Misc. Financial Services sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Misc. Financial Services industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Misc. Financial Services industry are lowering. It can presents Polar Capital Healthcare with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Misc. Financial Services sector.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Polar Capital Healthcare may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Misc. Financial Services sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Misc. Financial Services 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 Polar Capital Healthcare.
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.
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. Polar Capital Healthcare needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Misc. Financial Services industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Regulatory challenges
– Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Misc. Financial Services industry regulations.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Polar Capital Healthcare Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Polar Capital Healthcare 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 Polar Capital Healthcare needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.