SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Summit Therapeutics (United Kingdom)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Summit Therapeutics is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, technology disruption, increasing energy prices, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, wage bills are increasing, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Summit Therapeutics
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Summit Therapeutics can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Summit Therapeutics, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Summit Therapeutics 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 Summit Therapeutics can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Summit Therapeutics
2. Improving business portfolio management of Summit Therapeutics
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United Kingdom
4. Making a Major Drugs sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Summit Therapeutics
Strengths of Summit Therapeutics | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Summit Therapeutics are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Summit Therapeutics comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Major 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Summit Therapeutics has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Summit Therapeutics staying ahead in the Major Drugs 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 Major Drugs industry
– Summit Therapeutics is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Summit Therapeutics has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Summit Therapeutics is one of the leading players in the Major 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.
Organizational Resilience of Summit Therapeutics
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Summit Therapeutics does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Learning organization
- Summit Therapeutics 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 Summit Therapeutics is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Summit Therapeutics emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Summit Therapeutics has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Summit Therapeutics to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Diverse revenue streams
– Summit Therapeutics is present in almost all the verticals within the Major Drugs industry. This has provided Summit Therapeutics 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Summit Therapeutics in the Healthcare sector have low bargaining power. Summit Therapeutics has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Summit Therapeutics to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Innovation driven organization
– Summit Therapeutics is one of the most innovative firm in Major Drugs sector.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Summit Therapeutics has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Major Drugs industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Summit Therapeutics have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Summit Therapeutics | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Summit Therapeutics are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Summit Therapeutics has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Major 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Major Drugs industry, Summit Therapeutics 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Summit Therapeutics, in the dynamic environment of Major Drugs industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Summit Therapeutics has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Summit Therapeutics is one of the leading players in the Major Drugs industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Major Drugs industry in last five years.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Summit Therapeutics supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Summit Therapeutics is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Summit Therapeutics vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Skills based hiring in Major Drugs industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Summit Therapeutics 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.
High dependence on Summit Therapeutics ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Summit Therapeutics still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Major Drugs industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Summit Therapeutics has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Summit Therapeutics needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Major Drugs industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Summit Therapeutics can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Summit Therapeutics is planning to shift buying processes online.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Summit Therapeutics is just above the Major 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.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Major Drugs industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United Kingdom, Summit Therapeutics 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 Major Drugs industry.
Employees’ less understanding of Summit Therapeutics strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Summit Therapeutics 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.
Summit Therapeutics Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Summit Therapeutics are -
Buying journey improvements
– Summit Therapeutics can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Major 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 Major Drugs industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Summit Therapeutics in the Major Drugs industry. Now Summit Therapeutics can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Developing new processes and practices
– Summit Therapeutics can develop new processes and procedures in Major 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
– Summit Therapeutics has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Major Drugs sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Summit Therapeutics to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Summit Therapeutics to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Summit Therapeutics to increase its market reach. Summit Therapeutics 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Summit Therapeutics 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.
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 Summit Therapeutics 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.
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. Summit Therapeutics can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Loyalty marketing
– Summit Therapeutics 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.
Manufacturing automation
– Summit Therapeutics can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Major 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Summit Therapeutics 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 Major Drugs industry.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Summit Therapeutics in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Major Drugs industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Summit Therapeutics can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Summit Therapeutics operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Major Drugs sector.
Threats Summit Therapeutics External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Summit Therapeutics are -
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. Summit Therapeutics 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Summit Therapeutics is facing in Major Drugs sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Summit Therapeutics 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 Major Drugs industry.
Environmental challenges
– Summit Therapeutics 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. Summit Therapeutics can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Major Drugs industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Summit Therapeutics may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Major Drugs sector.
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.
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 Summit Therapeutics in the Major Drugs sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Summit Therapeutics 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.
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 Summit Therapeutics business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Regulatory challenges
– Summit Therapeutics 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 Major Drugs industry regulations.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Major Drugs industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Summit Therapeutics can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Summit Therapeutics 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 Major Drugs industry and other sectors.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Summit Therapeutics 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 Summit Therapeutics prominent markets.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Summit Therapeutics Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Summit Therapeutics 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 Summit Therapeutics 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 Summit Therapeutics 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 Summit Therapeutics 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 Summit Therapeutics needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
