Plumbline Life Sciences (222670) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Plumbline Life Sciences (South Korea)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Plumbline Life Sciences is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is backlash against globalization, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing commodity prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Plumbline Life Sciences
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Plumbline Life Sciences can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Plumbline Life Sciences, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Plumbline Life Sciences 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 Plumbline Life Sciences can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Plumbline Life Sciences
2. Improving business portfolio management of Plumbline Life Sciences
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in South Korea
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Plumbline Life Sciences
Strengths of Plumbline Life Sciences | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Plumbline Life Sciences are -
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Plumbline Life Sciences in the sector have low bargaining power. Plumbline Life Sciences has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Plumbline Life Sciences to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– Plumbline Life Sciences 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 Plumbline Life Sciences 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.
High brand equity
– Plumbline Life Sciences has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Plumbline Life Sciences to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Plumbline Life Sciences in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Analytics focus
– Plumbline Life Sciences 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 industry. The technology infrastructure of South Korea 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Plumbline Life Sciences is one of the leading players in the industry in South Korea. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in South Korea. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Plumbline Life Sciences has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Plumbline Life Sciences 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Plumbline Life Sciences is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Plumbline Life Sciences has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Plumbline Life Sciences have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Diverse revenue streams
– Plumbline Life Sciences is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Plumbline Life Sciences 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Plumbline Life Sciences has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Plumbline Life Sciences staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Weaknesses of Plumbline Life Sciences | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Plumbline Life Sciences are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Plumbline Life Sciences 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, Plumbline Life Sciences has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Plumbline Life Sciences 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.
High dependence on Plumbline Life Sciences ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Plumbline Life Sciences still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Plumbline Life Sciences has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Plumbline Life Sciences 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 industry using digital technology.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Plumbline Life Sciences 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Plumbline Life Sciences, in the dynamic environment of industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Plumbline Life Sciences has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of South Korea, Plumbline Life Sciences needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Lack of clear differentiation of Plumbline Life Sciences products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Plumbline Life Sciences needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Plumbline Life Sciences needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Plumbline Life Sciences can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Plumbline Life Sciences is planning to shift buying processes online.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Plumbline Life Sciences is one of the leading players in the industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Plumbline Life Sciences, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact 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.
Plumbline Life Sciences Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Plumbline Life Sciences are -
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. Plumbline Life Sciences can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Plumbline Life Sciences 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Plumbline Life Sciences can improve the customer journey of consumers in the 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Plumbline Life Sciences can develop new processes and procedures in 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Plumbline Life Sciences 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 industry.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Plumbline Life Sciences has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Plumbline Life Sciences to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Plumbline Life Sciences to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Plumbline Life Sciences in the industry. Now Plumbline Life Sciences can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Plumbline Life Sciences has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Plumbline Life Sciences to build a more holistic ecosystem for Plumbline Life Sciences products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Plumbline Life Sciences 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Plumbline Life Sciences in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Plumbline Life Sciences 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. Plumbline Life Sciences 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Plumbline Life Sciences is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Plumbline Life Sciences can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Plumbline Life Sciences to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Threats Plumbline Life Sciences External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Plumbline Life Sciences are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Plumbline Life Sciences with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Plumbline Life Sciences 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 Plumbline Life Sciences prominent markets.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Plumbline Life Sciences has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Plumbline Life Sciences needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Plumbline Life Sciences 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 industry and other sectors.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Plumbline Life Sciences in industry. The 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 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. Plumbline Life Sciences needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Plumbline Life Sciences is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Plumbline Life Sciences may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of sector.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Plumbline Life Sciences can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Plumbline Life Sciences 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Plumbline Life Sciences 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 industry regulations.
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 Plumbline Life Sciences business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Plumbline Life Sciences Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Plumbline Life Sciences 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 Plumbline Life Sciences 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 Plumbline Life Sciences 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 Plumbline Life Sciences 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 Plumbline Life Sciences needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.