SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Becton Dickinson (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Becton Dickinson is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing commodity prices, increasing energy prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Becton Dickinson can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Becton Dickinson, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Becton Dickinson 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 Becton Dickinson can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Becton Dickinson
2. Improving business portfolio management of Becton Dickinson
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Becton Dickinson
Strengths of Becton Dickinson | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Becton Dickinson are -
Diverse revenue streams
– Becton Dickinson is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided Becton Dickinson 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)
– Becton Dickinson has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Becton Dickinson staying ahead in the 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 industry
– Becton Dickinson is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Analytics focus
– Becton Dickinson 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 United States 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Becton Dickinson 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.
Organizational Resilience of Becton Dickinson
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Becton Dickinson does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Becton Dickinson has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Becton Dickinson 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Becton Dickinson in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Learning organization
- Becton Dickinson 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 Becton Dickinson is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Becton Dickinson emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Becton Dickinson digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Becton Dickinson 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Becton Dickinson comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Becton Dickinson is one of the leading players in the 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.
Weaknesses of Becton Dickinson | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Becton Dickinson are -
High bargaining power of channel partners in industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Becton Dickinson 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 industry.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Becton Dickinson is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Becton Dickinson to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
High dependence on Becton Dickinson ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Becton Dickinson still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Becton Dickinson has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Becton Dickinson is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but Becton Dickinson needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Becton Dickinson to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Becton Dickinson, 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.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Becton Dickinson 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, Becton Dickinson 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Becton Dickinson has high operating costs in the industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Becton Dickinson lucrative customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Becton Dickinson 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Becton Dickinson strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Becton Dickinson 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Becton Dickinson needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Becton Dickinson Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Becton Dickinson are -
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Becton Dickinson has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in industry. This can help Becton Dickinson to build a more holistic ecosystem for Becton Dickinson products in the industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Becton Dickinson 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Becton Dickinson 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.
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. Becton Dickinson can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Becton Dickinson can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Becton Dickinson 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. Becton Dickinson 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. Becton Dickinson 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Becton Dickinson 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 Becton Dickinson to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
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 Becton Dickinson 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Becton Dickinson can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Becton Dickinson operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Manufacturing automation
– Becton Dickinson can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Becton Dickinson 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.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Becton Dickinson 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.
Threats Becton Dickinson External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Becton Dickinson are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents Becton Dickinson 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, Becton Dickinson 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 Becton Dickinson prominent markets.
Environmental challenges
– Becton Dickinson 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. Becton Dickinson can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the 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 Becton Dickinson in the sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Regulatory challenges
– Becton Dickinson 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.
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. Becton Dickinson will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Increasing wage structure of Becton Dickinson
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Becton Dickinson.
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.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Becton Dickinson 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 industry.
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.
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. Becton Dickinson needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Becton Dickinson business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Becton Dickinson has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Becton Dickinson 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Becton Dickinson Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Becton Dickinson 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 Becton Dickinson 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 Becton Dickinson 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 Becton Dickinson 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 Becton Dickinson needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
