SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Acerus Pharmaceuticals (Canada)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Acerus Pharmaceuticals is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, technology disruption, increasing energy prices, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing transportation and logistics costs,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Acerus Pharmaceuticals
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Acerus Pharmaceuticals can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Acerus Pharmaceuticals, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Acerus 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 Acerus Pharmaceuticals can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Acerus Pharmaceuticals
2. Improving business portfolio management of Acerus Pharmaceuticals
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Canada
4. Making a Biotechnology & Drugs sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Acerus Pharmaceuticals
Strengths of Acerus Pharmaceuticals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Acerus Pharmaceuticals are -
Training and development
– Acerus 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.
Learning organization
- Acerus Pharmaceuticals is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Acerus Pharmaceuticals is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Acerus Pharmaceuticals emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Acerus Pharmaceuticals has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Acerus 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.
Organizational Resilience of Acerus Pharmaceuticals
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Acerus Pharmaceuticals does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Acerus Pharmaceuticals comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Biotechnology & 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.
High brand equity
– Acerus Pharmaceuticals has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Acerus Pharmaceuticals to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Acerus Pharmaceuticals 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Acerus 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 Acerus Pharmaceuticals have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Acerus Pharmaceuticals is one of the leading players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry in Canada. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Canada. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Analytics focus
– Acerus Pharmaceuticals 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry. The technology infrastructure of Canada 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Acerus Pharmaceuticals in the Healthcare sector have low bargaining power. Acerus Pharmaceuticals has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Acerus Pharmaceuticals to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– Acerus Pharmaceuticals has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Acerus Pharmaceuticals to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Acerus Pharmaceuticals to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Weaknesses of Acerus Pharmaceuticals | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Acerus Pharmaceuticals are -
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Acerus Pharmaceuticals is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, but Acerus Pharmaceuticals needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Acerus Pharmaceuticals to focus more on services in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Acerus 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 to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Acerus 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Acerus Pharmaceuticals has some of the most successful models in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Acerus Pharmaceuticals should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Canada, Acerus 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.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Canada, Acerus Pharmaceuticals needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Employees’ less understanding of Acerus Pharmaceuticals strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Acerus 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Acerus Pharmaceuticals has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Need for greater diversity
– Acerus Pharmaceuticals 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.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Acerus Pharmaceuticals, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Biotechnology & 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.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, Acerus Pharmaceuticals 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.
Acerus Pharmaceuticals Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Acerus Pharmaceuticals are -
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 Acerus Pharmaceuticals in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. Now Acerus Pharmaceuticals can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
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. Acerus Pharmaceuticals can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Buying journey improvements
– Acerus 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Acerus 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 Acerus Pharmaceuticals to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Acerus 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. Acerus 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. Acerus 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.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Acerus 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 Acerus Pharmaceuticals to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Acerus Pharmaceuticals 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Acerus Pharmaceuticals can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Acerus Pharmaceuticals is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Acerus Pharmaceuticals can utilize new technology in the field of Biotechnology & Drugs industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Acerus Pharmaceuticals in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Biotechnology & Drugs industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Acerus Pharmaceuticals can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Acerus 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 Acerus 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Acerus Pharmaceuticals has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This can help Acerus Pharmaceuticals to build a more holistic ecosystem for Acerus Pharmaceuticals products in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Threats Acerus Pharmaceuticals External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Acerus Pharmaceuticals are -
Environmental challenges
– Acerus 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. Acerus Pharmaceuticals can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Increasing wage structure of Acerus Pharmaceuticals
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Acerus Pharmaceuticals.
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. Acerus 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.
Regulatory challenges
– Acerus Pharmaceuticals 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry regulations.
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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Biotechnology & Drugs industry are lowering. It can presents Acerus 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.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Acerus 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. Acerus Pharmaceuticals needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Acerus 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 Acerus Pharmaceuticals prominent markets.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Acerus 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.
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 Acerus Pharmaceuticals in the Biotechnology & Drugs sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
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 Acerus Pharmaceuticals.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Acerus Pharmaceuticals Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Acerus 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 Acerus 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 Acerus 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 Acerus 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 Acerus Pharmaceuticals needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.