SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Medifocus Inc (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Medifocus Inc is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, there is backlash against globalization, increasing energy prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings,
supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , technology disruption, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Medifocus Inc can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Medifocus Inc, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Medifocus Inc 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 Medifocus Inc can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Medifocus Inc
2. Improving business portfolio management of Medifocus Inc
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Medical Equipment & Supplies sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Medifocus Inc
Strengths of Medifocus Inc | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Medifocus Inc are -
Analytics focus
– Medifocus Inc 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 Medical Equipment & Supplies 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.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Medifocus Inc has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Medifocus Inc 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.
Ability to lead change in Medical Equipment & Supplies
– Medifocus Inc is one of the leading players in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Medifocus Inc in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Digital Transformation in Medical Equipment & Supplies industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Medifocus Inc digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Medifocus Inc 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
– Medifocus Inc is one of the leading players in the Medical Equipment & Supplies 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.
High brand equity
– Medifocus Inc has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Medifocus Inc to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Medifocus Inc 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Medifocus Inc is present in almost all the verticals within the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry. This has provided Medifocus Inc 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)
– Medifocus Inc has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Medifocus Inc staying ahead in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Medical Equipment & Supplies industry
– Medifocus Inc has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Medifocus Inc to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Medifocus Inc to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Medifocus Inc in the Healthcare sector have low bargaining power. Medifocus Inc has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Medifocus Inc to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Medifocus Inc has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Medical Equipment & Supplies industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Medifocus Inc have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses of Medifocus Inc | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Medifocus Inc are -
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry, Medifocus Inc 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.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Medifocus Inc is one of the leading players in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry in last five years.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Medifocus Inc has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry over the last five years. Medifocus Inc 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Medifocus Inc, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Medical Equipment & Supplies 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Medifocus Inc has high operating costs in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Medifocus Inc lucrative customers.
Lack of clear differentiation of Medifocus Inc products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Medifocus Inc needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Medifocus Inc needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Medifocus Inc can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Medifocus Inc is planning to shift buying processes online.
Skills based hiring in Medical Equipment & Supplies industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Medifocus Inc 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Medifocus Inc strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Medifocus Inc don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Medical Equipment & Supplies industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Medifocus Inc 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 Medical Equipment & Supplies industry.
High dependence on Medifocus Inc ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Medifocus Inc still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Medical Equipment & Supplies industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Medifocus Inc has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Medifocus Inc Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Medifocus Inc are -
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. Medifocus Inc can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Manufacturing automation
– Medifocus Inc can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Medical Equipment & Supplies 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Medifocus Inc 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Medifocus Inc 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. Medifocus Inc 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Medifocus Inc can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Medical Equipment & Supplies 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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Medifocus Inc 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 Medifocus Inc to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Loyalty marketing
– Medifocus Inc 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– Medifocus Inc can develop new processes and procedures in Medical Equipment & Supplies 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Medifocus Inc 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 Medifocus Inc to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Medifocus Inc can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Medifocus Inc can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Medifocus Inc in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Medifocus Inc is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Medifocus Inc can utilize new technology in the field of Medical Equipment & Supplies industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Threats Medifocus Inc External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Medifocus Inc are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Medifocus Inc 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 Medical Equipment & Supplies industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Medifocus Inc 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 Medifocus Inc prominent markets.
Regulatory challenges
– Medifocus Inc 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 Medical Equipment & Supplies industry regulations.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Medifocus Inc 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Medical Equipment & Supplies industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Medifocus Inc can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
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. Medifocus Inc 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.
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 Medifocus Inc business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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 Medifocus Inc in the Medical Equipment & Supplies sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Medifocus Inc has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Medical Equipment & Supplies industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Medifocus Inc needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Medical Equipment & Supplies 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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Medifocus Inc 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 Medical Equipment & Supplies industry and other sectors.
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 Medifocus Inc.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Medical Equipment & Supplies industry are lowering. It can presents Medifocus Inc with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Medical Equipment & Supplies sector.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Medifocus Inc Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Medifocus Inc 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 Medifocus Inc 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 Medifocus Inc 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 Medifocus Inc 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 Medifocus Inc needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.