SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Benitec Biopharma Ltd (Australia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Benitec Biopharma Ltd is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, geopolitical disruptions, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , increasing household debt because of falling income levels, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
increasing commodity prices, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Benitec Biopharma Ltd
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Benitec Biopharma Ltd can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Benitec Biopharma Ltd, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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 Benitec Biopharma Ltd can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Benitec Biopharma Ltd
2. Improving business portfolio management of Benitec Biopharma Ltd
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Australia
4. Making a Biotechnology & Drugs sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Benitec Biopharma Ltd
Strengths of Benitec Biopharma Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Benitec Biopharma Ltd are -
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Benitec Biopharma Ltd to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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 Benitec Biopharma Ltd have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Organizational Resilience of Benitec Biopharma Ltd
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing Benitec Biopharma Ltd does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Benitec Biopharma Ltd in Biotechnology & Drugs industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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 Benitec Biopharma Ltd in the Healthcare sector have low bargaining power. Benitec Biopharma Ltd has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Benitec Biopharma Ltd to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Learning organization
- Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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 Benitec Biopharma Ltd is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Benitec Biopharma Ltd emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Digital Transformation in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Benitec Biopharma Ltd digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd is present in almost all the verticals within the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This has provided Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Weaknesses of Benitec Biopharma Ltd | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Benitec Biopharma Ltd are -
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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. Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Benitec Biopharma Ltd needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Benitec Biopharma Ltd can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Benitec Biopharma Ltd is planning to shift buying processes online.
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Benitec Biopharma Ltd, 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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Benitec Biopharma Ltd, in the dynamic environment of Biotechnology & Drugs industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Benitec Biopharma Ltd has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Benitec Biopharma Ltd is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Benitec Biopharma Ltd to provide better information regarding Biotechnology & Drugs products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
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 Benitec Biopharma Ltd supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Benitec Biopharma Ltd is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Benitec Biopharma Ltd vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
High bargaining power of channel partners in Biotechnology & Drugs industry
– because of the regulatory requirements in Australia, Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Employees’ less understanding of Benitec Biopharma Ltd strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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. Benitec Biopharma Ltd should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Need for greater diversity
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Benitec Biopharma Ltd Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Benitec Biopharma Ltd are -
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
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. Benitec Biopharma Ltd can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Benitec Biopharma Ltd can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Benitec Biopharma Ltd operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Benitec Biopharma Ltd is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
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 Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Benitec Biopharma Ltd to increase its market reach. Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Benitec Biopharma Ltd can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
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. Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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. Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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 Benitec Biopharma Ltd to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Benitec Biopharma Ltd to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats Benitec Biopharma Ltd External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Benitec Biopharma Ltd are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Biotechnology & Drugs industry are lowering. It can presents Benitec Biopharma Ltd with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Biotechnology & Drugs sector.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Increasing wage structure of Benitec Biopharma Ltd
– 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 Benitec Biopharma Ltd.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
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.
Regulatory challenges
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
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 Benitec Biopharma Ltd in the Biotechnology & Drugs sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Benitec Biopharma Ltd is facing in Biotechnology & Drugs sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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.
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. Benitec Biopharma Ltd needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Biotechnology & Drugs industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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 Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Environmental challenges
– Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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. Benitec Biopharma Ltd can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Biotechnology & Drugs industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Benitec Biopharma Ltd Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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 Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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 Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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 Benitec Biopharma Ltd 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 Benitec Biopharma Ltd needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.