Green Cross Health (PRCXF) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Retail (Drugs)
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Green Cross Health (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Green Cross Health is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, there is backlash against globalization, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, geopolitical disruptions, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing household debt because of falling income levels,
technology disruption, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Green Cross Health
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Green Cross Health can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Green Cross Health, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Green Cross Health 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 Green Cross Health can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Green Cross Health
2. Improving business portfolio management of Green Cross Health
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Retail (Drugs) sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Green Cross Health
Strengths of Green Cross Health | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Green Cross Health are -
Successful track record of launching new products
– Green Cross Health has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Green Cross Health 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Green Cross Health 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.
Training and development
– Green Cross Health has one of the best training and development program in Services 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 Retail (Drugs) industry
– Green Cross Health is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Green Cross Health in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Green Cross Health has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Green Cross Health to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
High brand equity
– Green Cross Health has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Green Cross Health to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Green Cross Health comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Retail (Drugs) industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Green Cross Health has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Green Cross Health staying ahead in the Retail (Drugs) industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Diverse revenue streams
– Green Cross Health is present in almost all the verticals within the Retail (Drugs) industry. This has provided Green Cross Health 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.
Organizational Resilience of Green Cross Health
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Green Cross Health does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Green Cross Health is one of the leading players in the Retail (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.
Analytics focus
– Green Cross Health 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 Retail (Drugs) 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.
Weaknesses of Green Cross Health | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Green Cross Health are -
Need for greater diversity
– Green Cross Health 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Green Cross Health needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Retail (Drugs) industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Green Cross Health can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Green Cross Health is planning to shift buying processes online.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of United States, Green Cross Health needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Lack of clear differentiation of Green Cross Health products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Green Cross Health needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Green Cross Health has high operating costs in the Retail (Drugs) industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Green Cross Health lucrative customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Green Cross Health has some of the most successful models in the Retail (Drugs) industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Green Cross Health should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Retail (Drugs) industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in United States, Green Cross Health 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 Retail (Drugs) industry.
Skills based hiring in Retail (Drugs) industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Green Cross Health 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Green Cross Health, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Retail (Drugs) 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.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Green Cross Health has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Retail (Drugs) industry over the last five years. Green Cross Health 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Green Cross Health strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Green Cross Health 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.
Green Cross Health Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Green Cross Health are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Green Cross Health 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Green Cross Health 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Green Cross Health is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Green Cross Health can utilize new technology in the field of Retail (Drugs) industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Retail (Drugs) industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Green Cross Health 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. Green Cross Health 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Green Cross Health 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 Retail (Drugs) industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Green Cross Health in the Retail (Drugs) industry. Now Green Cross Health 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, Green Cross Health can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Green Cross Health operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Retail (Drugs) sector.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Green Cross Health has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Retail (Drugs) sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Green Cross Health to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Green Cross Health to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Green Cross Health in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Retail (Drugs) industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Green Cross Health 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Green Cross Health has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Retail (Drugs) industry. This can help Green Cross Health to build a more holistic ecosystem for Green Cross Health products in the Retail (Drugs) industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Green Cross Health 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 Green Cross Health to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Green Cross Health to increase its market reach. Green Cross Health will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Threats Green Cross Health External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Green Cross Health are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Green Cross Health has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Retail (Drugs) industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Green Cross Health needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Retail (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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Green Cross Health is facing in Retail (Drugs) sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Retail (Drugs) industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Green Cross Health can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Retail (Drugs) industry are lowering. It can presents Green Cross Health with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Retail (Drugs) sector.
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. Green Cross Health 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 international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Green Cross Health 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 Green Cross Health prominent markets.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Green Cross Health 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 Retail (Drugs) industry.
Environmental challenges
– Green Cross Health 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. Green Cross Health can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Retail (Drugs) industry.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Green Cross Health in Retail (Drugs) industry. The Retail (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.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Green Cross Health 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 Retail (Drugs) industry and other sectors.
Regulatory challenges
– Green Cross Health 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 Retail (Drugs) industry regulations.
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 Green Cross Health.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Green Cross Health Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Green Cross Health 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 Green Cross Health 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 Green Cross Health 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 Green Cross Health 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 Green Cross Health needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
