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Boston Scientific Corporation SWOT Analysis / Matrix
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SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Boston Scientific Corporation managers to do a situational analysis of the firm . It is a handy technique to evalauate the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Boston Scientific Corporation is facing in its current business environment.
The Boston Scientific Corporation is one of the leading firms in its industry. Boston Scientific Corporation maintains its dominant position in market by critically analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis a highly interactive process and requires effective coordination among various departments within the company such as – marketing, finance, operations, management information systems and strategic planning.
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The SWOT Analysis framework helps an organization to identify the internal strategic factors such as -strengths and weaknesses, & external strategic factors such as - opportunities and threats. It leads to a 2X2 matrix – also called SWOT Matrix.
The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix enables the managers of the Boston Scientific Corporation to develop four types of strategies:
- SO (strengths-opportunities) Strategies
- WO (weaknesses-opportunities) Strategies
- ST (strengths-threats) Strategies
- WT (weaknesses-threats) Strategies
SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective
The central purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that an organization can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Boston Scientific Corporation strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.
Step by Step Guide to Boston Scientific Corporation SWOT Analysis
Strengths of Boston Scientific Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors
As one of the leading firms in its industry, Boston Scientific Corporation has numerous strengths that enable it to thrive in the market place. These strengths not only help it to protect the market share in existing markets but also help in penetrating new markets. Based on Fern Fort University extensive research – some of the strengths of Boston Scientific Corporation are –
Read - Boston Scientific Corporation Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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- Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. Boston Scientific Corporation is investing huge resources in training and development of its employees resulting in a workforce that is not only highly skilled but also motivated to achieve more.
- Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.
- Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to Boston Scientific Corporation products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
- Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
- Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – Boston Scientific Corporation is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
- Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
- Strong dealer community – It has built a culture among distributor & dealers where the dealers not only promote company’s products but also invest in training the sales team to explain to the customer how he/she can extract the maximum benefits out of the products.
- Strong distribution network – Over the years Boston Scientific Corporation has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
Weakness of Boston Scientific Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors
Weakness are the areas where Boston Scientific Corporation can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where an organization can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.
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- Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Boston Scientific Corporation needs to put more money in technology to integrate the processes across the board. Right now the investment in technologies is not at par with the vision of the company.
- Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Boston Scientific Corporation is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
- The marketing of the products left a lot to be desired. Even though the product is a success in terms of sale but its positioning and unique selling proposition is not clearly defined which can lead to the attacks in this segment from the competitors.
- High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry Boston Scientific Corporation has a higher attrition rate and have to spend a lot more compare to its competitors on training and development of its employees.
- The company has not being able to tackle the challenges present by the new entrants in the segment and has lost small market share in the niche categories. Boston Scientific Corporation has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
- Not very good at product demand forecasting leading to higher rate of missed opportunities compare to its competitors. One of the reason why the days inventory is high compare to its competitors is that Boston Scientific Corporation is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
- Days inventory is high compare to the competitors – making the company raise more capital to invest in the channel. This can impact the long term growth of Boston Scientific Corporation
Opportunities for Boston Scientific Corporation – External Strategic Factors
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- The new technology provides an opportunity to Boston Scientific Corporation to practices differentiated pricing strategy in the new market. It will enable the firm to maintain its loyal customers with great service and lure new customers through other value oriented propositions.
- Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of Boston Scientific Corporation’s products thus providing an opportunity to the company - either to boost its profitability or pass on the benefits to the customers to gain market share.
- The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Boston Scientific Corporation to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
- Organization’s core competencies can be a success in similar other products field. A comparative example could be - GE healthcare research helped it in developing better Oil drilling machines.
- The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as Boston Scientific Corporation to increase its profitability.
- New customers from online channel – Over the past few years the company has invested vast sum of money into the online platform. This investment has opened new sales channel for Boston Scientific Corporation. In the next few years the company can leverage this opportunity by knowing its customer better and serving their needs using big data analytics.
- Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Boston Scientific Corporation an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
- New environmental policies – The new opportunities will create a level playing field for all the players in the industry. It represent a great opportunity for Boston Scientific Corporation to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
Threats Boston Scientific Corporation Facing - External Strategic Factors
- Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
- Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
- Liability laws in different countries are different and Boston Scientific Corporation may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
- Intense competition – Stable profitability has increased the number of players in the industry over last two years which has put downward pressure on not only profitability but also on overall sales.
- Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Boston Scientific Corporation’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
- Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Boston Scientific Corporation profitability.
- New environment regulations under Paris agreement (2016) could be a threat to certain existing product categories .
- As the company is operating in numerous countries it is exposed to currency fluctuations especially given the volatile political climate in number of markets across the world.
Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Boston Scientific Corporation
Although the SWOT analysis is widely used as a strategic planning tool, the analysis does have its share of limitations.
- Certain capabilities or factors of an organization can be both a strength and weakness at the same time. This is one of the major limitations of SWOT analysis . For example changing environmental regulations can be both a threat to company it can also be an opportunity in a sense that it will enable the company to be on a level playing field or at advantage to competitors if it able to develop the products faster than the competitors.
- SWOT does not show how to achieve a competitive advantage, so it must not be an end in itself.
- The matrix is only a starting point for a discussion on how proposed strategies could be implemented. It provided an evaluation window but not an implementation plan based on strategic competitiveness of Boston Scientific Corporation
- SWOT is a static assessment - analysis of status quo with few prospective changes. As circumstances, capabilities, threats, and strategies change, the dynamics of a competitive environment may not be revealed in a single matrix.
- SWOT analysis may lead the firm to overemphasize a single internal or external factor in formulating strategies. There are interrelationships among the key internal and external factors that SWOT does not reveal that may be important in devising strategies.
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Weighted SWOT Analysis of Boston Scientific Corporation
In light of the above mentioned limitations of the SWOT analysis / matrix, corporate managers decided to provide weightage to each internal strength and weakness of the firm. Organizations also assess the likelihood of events taking place in the coming future and how strong their impact could be on company's performance.
This method is called Weighted SWOT analysis. It is better than doing simplistic SWOT analysis because with Weighted SWOT Analysis Boston Scientific Corporation managers can focus on the most critical factors and discount the non-important one. It also solves the long list problem where organizations ends up making a long list but none of the factors deemed too critical.
Limitation of Weighted SWOT analysis of Boston Scientific Corporation
This approach also suffers from one major drawback - it focus on individual importance of factor rather than how they are collectively important and impact the business holistically.
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Example of Weighted SWOT Analysis
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SWOT Worksheet & Template
If you like to do your own SWOT analysis or want to make your own Weighted SWOT SWOT matrix then feel free to download Fern Fort University SWOT Analysis Template.
References / Citations & Bibliography
- M. E. Porter, Competitive Strategy(New York: Free Press, 1980)
- A. D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962)
- O. E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies(New York: Free Press, 1975);
- L. Wrigley, Divisional Autonomy and Diversification (PhD, Harvard Business School, 1970)
- R. E. White, Generic Business Strategies, Organizational Context and Performance: An Empirical Investigation, Strategic Management Journal7 (1986)
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