BIO UV (ALTUV) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for BIO UV (France)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , BIO UV is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is backlash against globalization, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, increasing commodity prices, increasing energy prices,
technology disruption, wage bills are increasing, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that BIO UV can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the BIO UV, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which BIO UV 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 BIO UV can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of BIO UV
2. Improving business portfolio management of BIO UV
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in France
4. Making a sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of BIO UV
Strengths of BIO UV | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of BIO UV are -
Training and development
– BIO UV has one of the best training and development program in 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.
Digital Transformation in industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For BIO UV digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. BIO UV 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of BIO UV in industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of BIO UV comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the 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)
– BIO UV has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – BIO UV staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in industry
– BIO UV has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled BIO UV to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the industry. The sustainable margins have also helped BIO UV to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– BIO UV has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of BIO UV have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– BIO UV is one of the most innovative firm in sector.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the BIO UV 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.
Learning organization
- BIO UV 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 BIO UV is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at BIO UV emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Strong track record of project management in the industry
– BIO UV is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Successful track record of launching new products
– BIO UV has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. BIO UV 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 BIO UV | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of BIO UV are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, BIO UV has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. BIO UV even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of BIO UV, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact 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.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of BIO UV is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the industry, but BIO UV needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help BIO UV to focus more on services in the industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Lack of clear differentiation of BIO UV products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, BIO UV needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Skills based hiring in industry
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at BIO UV 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of BIO UV is just above the 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 France, BIO UV needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High dependence on BIO UV ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of BIO UV still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though BIO UV has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Workers concerns about automation
– As automation is fast increasing in the industry, BIO UV needs to come up with a strategy to reduce the workers concern regarding automation. Without a clear strategy, it could lead to disruption and uncertainty within the organization.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As BIO UV is one of the leading players in the industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Products dominated business model
– Even though BIO UV has some of the most successful models in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. BIO UV should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
BIO UV Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of BIO UV are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, BIO UV is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. BIO UV can utilize new technology in the field of industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Loyalty marketing
– BIO UV 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 BIO UV 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 industry.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, BIO UV 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.
Developing new processes and practices
– BIO UV can develop new processes and procedures in 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.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. BIO UV 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. BIO UV 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– BIO UV has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled BIO UV to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help BIO UV 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 BIO UV to increase its market reach. BIO UV 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.
Buying journey improvements
– BIO UV can improve the customer journey of consumers in the 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, BIO UV can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that BIO UV operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in sector.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for BIO UV in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the industry, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
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 BIO UV 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.
Manufacturing automation
– BIO UV can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in 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.
Threats BIO UV External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of BIO UV are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, BIO UV may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of 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 BIO UV in the sector and impact the bottomline 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 BIO UV.
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. BIO UV needs to understand the core reasons impacting the industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that BIO UV is facing in sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Increasing wage structure of BIO UV
– 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 BIO UV.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. BIO UV can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– BIO UV 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 industry.
Regulatory challenges
– BIO UV 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 industry regulations.
Environmental challenges
– BIO UV 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. BIO UV can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the industry.
Consumer confidence and its impact on BIO UV 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 industry and other sectors.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to industry are lowering. It can presents BIO UV with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the 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. BIO UV 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.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of BIO UV Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at BIO UV 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 BIO UV 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 BIO UV 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 BIO UV 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 BIO UV needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
