Achieve Life Sciences (ACHV) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources

Introduction to SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Achieve Life Sciences (United States)

Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Achieve Life Sciences is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, technology disruption, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing commodity prices, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, wage bills are increasing, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , etc

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Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Achieve Life Sciences

SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Achieve Life Sciences can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Achieve Life Sciences, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Achieve 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.

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SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix

SWOT analysis of Achieve Life Sciences can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Achieve Life Sciences
2. Improving business portfolio management of Achieve Life Sciences
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Biotechnology & Drugs sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Achieve Life Sciences

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Strengths of Achieve Life Sciences | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The strengths of Achieve Life Sciences are -

High switching costs

– The high switching costs that Achieve Life Sciences 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 Achieve Life Sciences

– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Achieve Life Sciences does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.

Strong track record of project management in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry

– Achieve 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.

Digital Transformation in Biotechnology & Drugs industry

- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Achieve Life Sciences digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Achieve Life Sciences 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.

Ability to recruit top talent

– Achieve Life Sciences is one of the leading players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.

Learning organization

- Achieve Life Sciences 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 Achieve Life Sciences is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Achieve Life Sciences emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.

Effective Research and Development (R&D)

– Achieve Life Sciences has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Achieve Life Sciences staying ahead in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.

Cross disciplinary teams

– Horizontal connected teams at the Achieve 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.

Innovation driven organization

– Achieve Life Sciences is one of the most innovative firm in Biotechnology & Drugs sector.

Superior customer experience

– The customer experience strategy of Achieve Life Sciences in Biotechnology & Drugs industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.

Diverse revenue streams

– Achieve Life Sciences is present in almost all the verticals within the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This has provided Achieve 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.

Operational resilience

– The operational resilience strategy of Achieve Life Sciences comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Biotechnology & 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.

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Weaknesses of Achieve Life Sciences | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The weaknesses of Achieve Life Sciences are -

Products dominated business model

– Even though Achieve Life Sciences has some of the most successful models in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Achieve Life Sciences should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.

Lack of clear differentiation of Achieve Life Sciences products

– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Achieve Life Sciences needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.

Slow to harness new channels of communication

– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Achieve Life Sciences is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Achieve Life Sciences to provide better information regarding Biotechnology & Drugs products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.

Increasing silos among functional specialists

– The organizational structure of Achieve Life Sciences is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, but Achieve Life Sciences needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Achieve Life Sciences to focus more on services in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.

Ability to respond to the competition

– As the decision making is very deliberative at Achieve Life Sciences, in the dynamic environment of Biotechnology & Drugs industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Achieve Life Sciences has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.

Need for greater diversity

– Achieve Life Sciences has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.

High operating costs

– Compare to the competitors, Achieve Life Sciences 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 Achieve Life Sciences lucrative customers.

Compensation and incentives

– The revenue per employee of Achieve Life Sciences 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.

Aligning sales with marketing

– From the outside it seems that Achieve Life Sciences 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 Achieve Life Sciences can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Achieve Life Sciences is planning to shift buying processes online.

High dependence on Achieve Life Sciences ‘s star products

– The top 2 products and services of Achieve Life Sciences 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 Achieve Life Sciences has relatively successful track record of launching new products.

Skills based hiring in Biotechnology & Drugs industry

– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Achieve 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.

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Achieve Life Sciences Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The opportunities of Achieve Life Sciences are -

Low interest rates

– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Achieve Life Sciences can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.

Reforming the budgeting process

- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Achieve Life Sciences can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.

Learning at scale

– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Achieve 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.

Finding new ways to collaborate

– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Biotechnology & Drugs industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Achieve Life Sciences can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.

Buying journey improvements

– Achieve Life Sciences 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.

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 Achieve Life Sciences 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.

Loyalty marketing

– Achieve 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.

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. Achieve Life Sciences can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.

Better consumer reach

– The expansion of the 5G network will help Achieve Life Sciences to increase its market reach. Achieve Life Sciences 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

– Achieve 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.

Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains

– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Achieve Life Sciences 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 Achieve Life Sciences to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.

Creating value in data economy

– The success of analytics program of Achieve Life Sciences has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This can help Achieve Life Sciences to build a more holistic ecosystem for Achieve Life Sciences products in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.

Using analytics as competitive advantage

– Achieve Life Sciences 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 Achieve Life Sciences to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Achieve Life Sciences to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.

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Threats Achieve Life Sciences External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis

The threats of Achieve Life Sciences are -

Trade war between China and United States

– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Achieve Life Sciences 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.

Environmental challenges

– Achieve Life Sciences 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. Achieve Life Sciences can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry.

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 Achieve Life Sciences in the Biotechnology & Drugs sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.

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. Achieve 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.

Barriers of entry lowering

– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Biotechnology & Drugs industry are lowering. It can presents Achieve Life Sciences with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Biotechnology & Drugs sector.

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. Achieve Life Sciences needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.

Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins

– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Achieve 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 Achieve Life Sciences prominent markets.

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 Achieve Life Sciences business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.

High dependence on third party suppliers

– Achieve 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.

Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution

– Achieve Life Sciences has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Achieve Life Sciences 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.

Stagnating economy with rate increase

– Achieve Life Sciences 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.

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.

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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Achieve Life Sciences Template, Example

Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Achieve 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 Achieve 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 Achieve 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 Achieve 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 Achieve Life Sciences needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

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