SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Harvard Bioscience (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Harvard Bioscience is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, technology disruption, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google,
competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Harvard Bioscience
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Harvard Bioscience can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Harvard Bioscience, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Harvard Bioscience 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 Harvard Bioscience can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Harvard Bioscience
2. Improving business portfolio management of Harvard Bioscience
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 Harvard Bioscience
Strengths of Harvard Bioscience | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Harvard Bioscience are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Harvard Bioscience comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Harvard Bioscience 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.
Digital Transformation in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Harvard Bioscience digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Harvard Bioscience 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Harvard Bioscience is one of the most innovative firm in Scientific & Technical Instr. sector.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Harvard Bioscience has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Harvard Bioscience have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
High brand equity
– Harvard Bioscience has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Harvard Bioscience to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Harvard Bioscience in the Technology sector have low bargaining power. Harvard Bioscience has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Harvard Bioscience to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Harvard Bioscience 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 Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Harvard Bioscience has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Harvard Bioscience staying ahead in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Harvard Bioscience in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Harvard Bioscience 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry
– Harvard Bioscience is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Weaknesses of Harvard Bioscience | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Harvard Bioscience are -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Harvard Bioscience 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 Harvard Bioscience lucrative customers.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Harvard Bioscience 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. Harvard Bioscience 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Harvard Bioscience, in the dynamic environment of Scientific & Technical Instr. industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Harvard Bioscience has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Skills based hiring in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Harvard Bioscience 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Harvard Bioscience is one of the leading players in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry in last five years.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Harvard Bioscience 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. Harvard Bioscience should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Harvard Bioscience, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Harvard Bioscience needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Harvard Bioscience 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 Harvard Bioscience can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Harvard Bioscience is planning to shift buying processes online.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Scientific & Technical Instr. industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Harvard Bioscience 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 Scientific & Technical Instr. industry.
Need for greater diversity
– Harvard Bioscience 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.
Harvard Bioscience Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Harvard Bioscience are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Harvard Bioscience 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Harvard Bioscience 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 Harvard Bioscience to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Harvard Bioscience 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 Harvard Bioscience can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Manufacturing automation
– Harvard Bioscience can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Harvard Bioscience is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Harvard Bioscience can utilize new technology in the field of Scientific & Technical Instr. industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Harvard Bioscience 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Harvard Bioscience has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Scientific & Technical Instr. sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Harvard Bioscience to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Harvard Bioscience to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Harvard Bioscience can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Harvard Bioscience operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Scientific & Technical Instr. sector.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Harvard Bioscience in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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. Harvard Bioscience 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. Harvard Bioscience 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Harvard Bioscience can develop new processes and procedures in Scientific & Technical Instr. 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.
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 Harvard Bioscience in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. Now Harvard Bioscience can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Harvard Bioscience External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Harvard Bioscience are -
Consumer confidence and its impact on Harvard Bioscience 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 Scientific & Technical Instr. industry and other sectors.
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. Harvard Bioscience 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Scientific & Technical Instr. industry are lowering. It can presents Harvard Bioscience 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Harvard Bioscience 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.
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. Harvard Bioscience needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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 Harvard Bioscience in the Scientific & Technical Instr. sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Harvard Bioscience is facing in Scientific & Technical Instr. sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
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 Harvard Bioscience business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Harvard Bioscience 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.
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 Harvard Bioscience.
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. Harvard Bioscience can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Harvard Bioscience has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Scientific & Technical Instr. industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Harvard Bioscience 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.
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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Harvard Bioscience Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Harvard Bioscience 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 Harvard Bioscience 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 Harvard Bioscience 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 Harvard Bioscience 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 Harvard Bioscience needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
