SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma (China)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – geopolitical disruptions, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing energy prices, wage bills are increasing, there is backlash against globalization,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma
2. Improving business portfolio management of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in China
4. Making a Biotechnology & Drugs sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma
Strengths of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma are -
High brand equity
– Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma in Biotechnology & Drugs industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Strong track record of project management in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Analytics focus
– Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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 China 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.
Training and development
– Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma in the Healthcare sector have low bargaining power. Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Learning organization
- Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Weaknesses of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma are -
Lack of clear differentiation of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Biotechnology & Drugs industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry over the last five years. Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma has high operating costs in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma lucrative customers.
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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma, 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma to provide better information regarding Biotechnology & Drugs products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Skills based hiring in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma are -
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Buying journey improvements
– Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma to increase its market reach. Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
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. Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Loyalty marketing
– Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. Now Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Threats Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma are -
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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry and other sectors.
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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma in the Biotechnology & Drugs sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Biotechnology & 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.
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.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Biotechnology & Drugs industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma is facing in Biotechnology & Drugs 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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Environmental challenges
– Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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. Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma prominent markets.
Regulatory challenges
– Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma 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 Zhejiang Anglikang Pharma needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.