Venture Life Group (VLG) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Biotechnology & Drugs
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Venture Life Group (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Venture Life Group is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is backlash against globalization, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing transportation and logistics costs, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%,
wage bills are increasing, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Venture Life Group
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Venture Life Group can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Venture Life Group, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Venture Life Group 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 Venture Life Group can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Venture Life Group
2. Improving business portfolio management of Venture Life Group
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Biotechnology & Drugs sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Venture Life Group
Strengths of Venture Life Group | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Venture Life Group are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Venture Life Group is present in almost all the verticals within the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This has provided Venture Life Group 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.
High brand equity
– Venture Life Group has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Venture Life Group to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Venture Life Group 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.
Training and development
– Venture Life Group 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– Venture Life Group has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Venture Life Group to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Venture Life Group to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Venture Life Group 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 Venture Life Group is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Venture Life Group emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Venture Life Group is one of the leading players in the Biotechnology & Drugs 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 Venture Life Group in the Healthcare sector have low bargaining power. Venture Life Group has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Venture Life Group to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Organizational Resilience of Venture Life Group
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Venture Life Group does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to lead change in Biotechnology & Drugs
– Venture Life Group is one of the leading players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in United Kingdom. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in United Kingdom but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Venture Life Group in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Analytics focus
– Venture Life Group is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. The technology infrastructure of 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.
Digital Transformation in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Venture Life Group digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Venture Life Group has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Weaknesses of Venture Life Group | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Venture Life Group are -
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Venture Life Group, in the dynamic environment of Biotechnology & Drugs industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Venture Life Group has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High dependence on Venture Life Group ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Venture Life Group 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 Venture Life Group has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United Kingdom, Venture Life Group needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Lack of clear differentiation of Venture Life Group products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Venture Life Group needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Venture Life Group has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Venture Life Group 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 Venture Life Group lucrative customers.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, Venture Life Group needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Venture Life Group 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. Venture Life Group 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Venture Life Group is just above the Biotechnology & Drugs 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Venture Life Group has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Venture Life Group 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 Venture Life Group can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Venture Life Group is planning to shift buying processes online.
Venture Life Group Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Venture Life Group are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Venture Life Group 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 Venture Life Group to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Venture Life Group can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Buying journey improvements
– Venture Life Group can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Venture Life Group in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. Now Venture Life Group can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Venture Life Group 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 Venture Life Group to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Venture Life Group to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Venture Life Group 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Venture Life Group 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Venture Life Group is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Venture Life Group 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Venture Life Group 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.
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. Venture Life Group can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Venture Life Group 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Loyalty marketing
– Venture Life Group 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.
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. Venture Life Group 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. Venture Life Group 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.
Threats Venture Life Group External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Venture Life Group are -
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Venture Life Group 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Biotechnology & Drugs industry are lowering. It can presents Venture Life Group with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
Environmental challenges
– Venture Life Group 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. Venture Life Group can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Increasing wage structure of Venture Life Group
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Venture Life Group.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Venture Life Group 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Venture Life Group has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Venture Life Group 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 Venture Life Group is facing in Biotechnology & Drugs sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Venture Life Group 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry and other sectors.
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 Venture Life Group business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Venture Life Group in Biotechnology & Drugs industry. The Biotechnology & Drugs 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.
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. Venture Life Group 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.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Venture Life Group 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 Venture Life Group prominent markets.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Biotechnology & Drugs industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Venture Life Group can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Venture Life Group Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Venture Life Group 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 Venture Life Group 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 Venture Life Group 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 Venture Life Group 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 Venture Life Group needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
