China Cord Blood Corporation SWOT Analysis / Matrix

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SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that can be used by China Cord Blood Corporation managers to do a situational analysis of the firm . It is an important technique to understand the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) China Cord Blood Corporation is facing in its current business environment.

The China Cord Blood Corporation is one of the leading firms in its industry. China Cord Blood Corporation maintains its prominent position in market by critically analyzing and reviewing the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis an immensenly 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 known as SWOT Matrix.

The Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) Analysis / Matrix enables the managers of the China Cord Blood Corporation to develop four types of strategies:

SO (strengths-opportunities) Strategies
WO (weaknesses-opportunities) Strategies
ST (strengths-threats) Strategies
WT (weaknesses-threats) Strategies

China Cord Blood Corporation swot analysis / matrix

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The central purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a company can use to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect China Cord Blood Corporation strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to China Cord Blood Corporation SWOT Analysis

Strengths of China Cord Blood Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, China Cord Blood Corporation has numerous strengths that help 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 China Cord Blood Corporation are –

Read - China Cord Blood Corporation Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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Strong Free Cash Flow – China Cord Blood Corporation has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – China Cord Blood Corporation is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years China Cord Blood Corporation has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of China Cord Blood Corporation just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
Highly skilled workforce through successful training and learning programs. China Cord Blood 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.
High level of customer satisfaction – the company with its dedicated customer relationship management department has able to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction among present customers and good brand equity among the potential customers.
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.
Superb Performance in New Markets – China Cord Blood Corporation has built expertise at entering new markets and making success of them. The expansion has helped the organization to build new revenue stream and diversify the economic cycle risk in the markets it operates in.
Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.

Weakness of China Cord Blood Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where China Cord Blood 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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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 China Cord Blood Corporation
Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
Limited success outside core business – Even though China Cord Blood Corporation is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though China Cord Blood Corporation is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
Financial planning is not done properly and efficiently. The current asset ratio and liquid asset ratios suggest that the company can use the cash more efficiently than what it is doing at present.
High attrition rate in work force – compare to other organizations in the industry China Cord Blood 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. China Cord Blood Corporation has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.

Opportunities for China Cord Blood Corporation – External Strategic Factors

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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 China Cord Blood Corporation to drive home its advantage in new technology and gain market share in the new product category.
Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of China Cord Blood Corporation.
Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of China Cord Blood Corporation products by the state as well as federal government contractors.
New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the China Cord Blood Corporation . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
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 China Cord Blood Corporation to increase its profitability.
Stable free cash flow provides opportunities to invest in adjacent product segments. With more cash in bank the company can invest in new technologies as well as in new products segments. This should open a window of opportunity for China Cord Blood Corporation in other product categories.
The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable China Cord Blood Corporation to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.

Threats China Cord Blood Corporation Facing - External Strategic Factors

Rising pay level especially movements such as $15 an hour and increasing prices in the China can lead to serious pressure on profitability of China Cord Blood Corporation
Increasing trend toward isolationism in the American economy can lead to similar reaction from other government thus negatively impacting the international sales.
The company can face lawsuits in various markets given - different laws and continuous fluctuations regarding product standards in those markets.
New technologies developed by the competitor or market disruptor could be a serious threat to the industry in medium to long term future.
Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
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.
The demand of the highly profitable products is seasonal in nature and any unlikely event during the peak season may impact the profitability of the company in short to medium term.
Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for China Cord Blood Corporation in those markets.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for China Cord Blood 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 China Cord Blood 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 China Cord Blood 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 China Cord Blood 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 China Cord Blood 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

You can email us to get an example document of Weighted SWOT analysis.

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)