SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Eton Pharmaceuticals (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Eton Pharmaceuticals is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, there is backlash against globalization, increasing commodity prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation,
geopolitical disruptions, increasing energy prices, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Eton Pharmaceuticals
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Eton Pharmaceuticals can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Eton Pharmaceuticals, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 Eton Pharmaceuticals can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Eton Pharmaceuticals
2. Improving business portfolio management of Eton Pharmaceuticals
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 Eton Pharmaceuticals
Strengths of Eton Pharmaceuticals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Eton Pharmaceuticals are -
Training and development
– Eton Pharmaceuticals has one of the best training and development program in Healthcare 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– Eton Pharmaceuticals is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Eton Pharmaceuticals 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Eton Pharmaceuticals in Biotechnology & Drugs industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Diverse revenue streams
– Eton Pharmaceuticals is present in almost all the verticals within the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This has provided Eton Pharmaceuticals 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)
– Eton Pharmaceuticals has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Eton Pharmaceuticals 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.
Digital Transformation in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Eton Pharmaceuticals digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Eton Pharmaceuticals 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Eton Pharmaceuticals has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Biotechnology & Drugs industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Eton Pharmaceuticals have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– Eton Pharmaceuticals has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Eton Pharmaceuticals to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Eton Pharmaceuticals to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
High brand equity
– Eton Pharmaceuticals has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Eton Pharmaceuticals to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Eton Pharmaceuticals 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Eton Pharmaceuticals is one of the most innovative firm in Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
Weaknesses of Eton Pharmaceuticals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Eton Pharmaceuticals are -
High dependence on Eton Pharmaceuticals ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 Eton Pharmaceuticals has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Lack of clear differentiation of Eton Pharmaceuticals products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Eton Pharmaceuticals needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Eton Pharmaceuticals has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Eton Pharmaceuticals is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, but Eton Pharmaceuticals needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Eton Pharmaceuticals to focus more on services in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Employees’ less understanding of Eton Pharmaceuticals strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Eton Pharmaceuticals 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, Eton Pharmaceuticals needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Eton Pharmaceuticals is one of the leading players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in last five years.
Skills based hiring in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 bargaining power of channel partners in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry using digital technology.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Eton Pharmaceuticals has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry over the last five years. Eton Pharmaceuticals 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.
Eton Pharmaceuticals Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Eton Pharmaceuticals are -
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 Eton Pharmaceuticals to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Eton Pharmaceuticals can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Eton Pharmaceuticals in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. Now Eton Pharmaceuticals can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Eton Pharmaceuticals can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Eton Pharmaceuticals operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
Buying journey improvements
– Eton Pharmaceuticals 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 Eton Pharmaceuticals to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 Eton Pharmaceuticals to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Eton Pharmaceuticals to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Eton Pharmaceuticals 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. Eton Pharmaceuticals 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Eton Pharmaceuticals can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Eton Pharmaceuticals to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Eton Pharmaceuticals can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Eton Pharmaceuticals has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This can help Eton Pharmaceuticals to build a more holistic ecosystem for Eton Pharmaceuticals products in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Eton Pharmaceuticals 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.
Threats Eton Pharmaceuticals External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Eton Pharmaceuticals are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Eton Pharmaceuticals has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Eton Pharmaceuticals 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
– Eton Pharmaceuticals 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.
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. Eton Pharmaceuticals 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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Eton Pharmaceuticals may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry and other sectors.
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 Eton Pharmaceuticals in the Biotechnology & Drugs sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Eton Pharmaceuticals 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. Eton Pharmaceuticals can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Biotechnology & Drugs industry are lowering. It can presents Eton Pharmaceuticals with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
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. Eton Pharmaceuticals can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Eton Pharmaceuticals.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 Eton Pharmaceuticals prominent markets.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Eton Pharmaceuticals 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.
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. Eton Pharmaceuticals needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Eton Pharmaceuticals Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 Eton Pharmaceuticals 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 Eton Pharmaceuticals needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
