Amer Bio Medica (ABMC) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Scientific & Technical Instr.
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Amer Bio Medica (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Amer Bio Medica is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing commodity prices, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
geopolitical disruptions, there is backlash against globalization, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Amer Bio Medica can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Amer Bio Medica, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Amer Bio Medica 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 Amer Bio Medica can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Amer Bio Medica
2. Improving business portfolio management of Amer Bio Medica
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Scientific & Technical Instr. sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Amer Bio Medica
Strengths of Amer Bio Medica | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Amer Bio Medica are -
Training and development
– Amer Bio Medica has one of the best training and development program in Technology 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 Scientific & Technical Instr. industry
– Amer Bio Medica has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Amer Bio Medica to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Amer Bio Medica to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Amer Bio Medica digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Amer Bio Medica 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Amer Bio Medica in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Amer Bio Medica 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.
Organizational Resilience of Amer Bio Medica
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Amer Bio Medica does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Diverse revenue streams
– Amer Bio Medica is present in almost all the verticals within the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. This has provided Amer Bio Medica 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.
Ability to lead change in Scientific & Technical Instr.
– Amer Bio Medica is one of the leading players in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Amer Bio Medica 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 Scientific & Technical Instr. industry
– Amer Bio Medica is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Amer Bio Medica 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 Amer Bio Medica is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Amer Bio Medica emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Amer Bio Medica has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Amer Bio Medica to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Amer Bio Medica 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.
Weaknesses of Amer Bio Medica | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Amer Bio Medica are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Amer Bio Medica 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 Scientific & Technical Instr. industry using digital technology.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Amer Bio Medica has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Skills based hiring in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Amer Bio Medica 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 operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Amer Bio Medica has high operating costs in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Amer Bio Medica lucrative customers.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Amer Bio Medica is just above the Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Amer Bio Medica has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry over the last five years. Amer Bio Medica 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Amer Bio Medica has some of the most successful models in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Amer Bio Medica should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Amer Bio Medica needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Amer Bio Medica can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Amer Bio Medica is planning to shift buying processes online.
Employees’ less understanding of Amer Bio Medica strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Amer Bio Medica 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.
High dependence on Amer Bio Medica ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Amer Bio Medica still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Amer Bio Medica has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Amer Bio Medica is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Amer Bio Medica to provide better information regarding Scientific & Technical Instr. products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Amer Bio Medica Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Amer Bio Medica are -
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Amer Bio Medica can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Amer Bio Medica operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Scientific & Technical Instr. sector.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Amer Bio Medica 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 Scientific & Technical Instr. industry.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Amer Bio Medica 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 Amer Bio Medica to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Amer Bio Medica 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 Amer Bio Medica to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Amer Bio Medica 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Amer Bio Medica 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.
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. Amer Bio Medica can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Amer Bio Medica 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. Amer Bio Medica 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
– Amer Bio Medica 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Amer Bio Medica can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Amer Bio Medica can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
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 Amer Bio Medica 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Amer Bio Medica in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. Now Amer Bio Medica can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Amer Bio Medica External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Amer Bio Medica are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Scientific & Technical Instr. industry are lowering. It can presents Amer Bio Medica with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Amer Bio Medica may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Scientific & Technical Instr. sector.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Amer Bio Medica 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 Amer Bio Medica prominent markets.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Amer Bio Medica has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Amer Bio Medica needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Amer Bio Medica 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 Scientific & Technical Instr. 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 Amer Bio Medica business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Amer Bio Medica can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Amer Bio Medica in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. The Scientific & Technical Instr. 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
– Amer Bio Medica 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. Amer Bio Medica can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry.
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 Amer Bio Medica.
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 Amer Bio Medica in the Scientific & Technical Instr. sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Amer Bio Medica Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Amer Bio Medica 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 Amer Bio Medica 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 Amer Bio Medica 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 Amer Bio Medica 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 Amer Bio Medica needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.