Ramsay Health Care (RHC) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Healthcare Facilities
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Ramsay Health Care (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Ramsay Health Care is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – wage bills are increasing, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing energy prices, challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
geopolitical disruptions, increasing transportation and logistics costs, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Ramsay Health Care
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Ramsay Health Care can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Ramsay Health Care, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Ramsay Health Care 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 Ramsay Health Care can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Ramsay Health Care
2. Improving business portfolio management of Ramsay Health Care
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Healthcare Facilities sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Ramsay Health Care
Strengths of Ramsay Health Care | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Ramsay Health Care are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Ramsay Health Care is one of the leading players in the Healthcare Facilities industry in Australia. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in Australia. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Diverse revenue streams
– Ramsay Health Care is present in almost all the verticals within the Healthcare Facilities industry. This has provided Ramsay Health Care 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.
Innovation driven organization
– Ramsay Health Care is one of the most innovative firm in Healthcare Facilities sector.
Strong track record of project management in the Healthcare Facilities industry
– Ramsay Health Care is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Learning organization
- Ramsay Health Care 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 Ramsay Health Care is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Ramsay Health Care emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Ramsay Health Care has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Ramsay Health Care staying ahead in the Healthcare Facilities industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Ramsay Health Care 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 Healthcare Facilities industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Ramsay Health Care digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Ramsay Health Care 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.
Training and development
– Ramsay Health Care 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.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Ramsay Health Care has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Healthcare Facilities industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Ramsay Health Care have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Ramsay Health Care in Healthcare Facilities industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Ramsay Health Care has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Ramsay Health Care 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.
Weaknesses of Ramsay Health Care | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Ramsay Health Care are -
Need for greater diversity
– Ramsay Health Care 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.
High dependence on Ramsay Health Care ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Ramsay Health Care still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Healthcare Facilities industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Ramsay Health Care has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the Healthcare Facilities industry, Ramsay Health Care 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Ramsay Health Care is just above the Healthcare Facilities industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Australia, Ramsay Health Care needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Ramsay Health Care 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 Healthcare Facilities industry using digital technology.
Lack of clear differentiation of Ramsay Health Care products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Ramsay Health Care needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Skills based hiring in Healthcare Facilities industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Ramsay Health Care 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Ramsay Health Care is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Healthcare Facilities industry, but Ramsay Health Care needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Ramsay Health Care to focus more on services in the Healthcare Facilities industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Ramsay Health Care supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Ramsay Health Care is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Ramsay Health Care vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Ramsay Health Care, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Healthcare Facilities 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.
Ramsay Health Care Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Ramsay Health Care are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Ramsay Health Care 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Healthcare Facilities industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Ramsay Health Care 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. Ramsay Health Care 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Ramsay Health Care has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Healthcare Facilities industry. This can help Ramsay Health Care to build a more holistic ecosystem for Ramsay Health Care products in the Healthcare Facilities industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Manufacturing automation
– Ramsay Health Care can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Healthcare Facilities 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, Ramsay Health Care is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Ramsay Health Care can utilize new technology in the field of Healthcare Facilities industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– Ramsay Health Care 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Ramsay Health Care 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Ramsay Health Care in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Healthcare Facilities industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Ramsay Health Care 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Healthcare Facilities industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Ramsay Health Care in the Healthcare Facilities industry. Now Ramsay Health Care can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Developing new processes and practices
– Ramsay Health Care can develop new processes and procedures in Healthcare Facilities 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.
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. Ramsay Health Care can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Ramsay Health Care 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 Ramsay Health Care to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats Ramsay Health Care External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Ramsay Health Care are -
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. Ramsay Health Care 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.
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 Ramsay Health Care.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Healthcare Facilities industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Ramsay Health Care can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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 Ramsay Health Care in the Healthcare Facilities sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Environmental challenges
– Ramsay Health Care 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. Ramsay Health Care can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Healthcare Facilities industry.
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. Ramsay Health Care needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Healthcare Facilities industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Ramsay Health Care has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Healthcare Facilities industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Ramsay Health Care needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Healthcare Facilities 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.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Healthcare Facilities industry are lowering. It can presents Ramsay Health Care with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Healthcare Facilities sector.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Ramsay Health Care 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 Healthcare Facilities industry.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Ramsay Health Care may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Healthcare Facilities sector.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Ramsay Health Care is facing in Healthcare Facilities 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 Ramsay Health Care business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Ramsay Health Care Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Ramsay Health Care 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 Ramsay Health Care 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 Ramsay Health Care 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 Ramsay Health Care 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 Ramsay Health Care needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.