Exact Sciences Corporation SWOT Analysis / Matrix

Business Essays, Term Papers & Research Papers

SWOT analysis is a vital strategic planning tool that can be used by Exact Sciences Corporation managers to do a situational analysis of the organization . It is an important technique to map out the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) Exact Sciences Corporation is facing in its current business environment.

The Exact Sciences Corporation is one of the leading firms in its industry. Exact Sciences Corporation maintains its prominent position in market by carefully 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 facilitates 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 Exact Sciences Corporation to develop four types of strategies:

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

Exact Sciences Corporation swot analysis / matrix

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The core purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect Exact Sciences Corporation strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to Exact Sciences Corporation SWOT Analysis

Strengths of Exact Sciences Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, Exact Sciences 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 Exact Sciences Corporation are –

Read - Exact Sciences Corporation Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
Reliable suppliers – It has a strong base of reliable supplier of raw material thus enabling the company to overcome any supply chain bottlenecks.
Superb Performance in New Markets – Exact Sciences 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.
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 Exact Sciences Corporation has built a reliable distribution network that can reach majority of its potential market.
Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years Exact Sciences Corporation has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of Exact Sciences Corporation just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
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.

Weakness of Exact Sciences Corporation – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where Exact Sciences 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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Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though Exact Sciences Corporation is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.
Investment in Research and Development is below the fastest growing players in the industry. Even though Exact Sciences Corporation is spending above the industry average on Research and Development, it has not been able to compete with the leading players in the industry in terms of innovation. It has come across as a mature firm looking forward to bring out products based on tested features in the market.
Limited success outside core business – Even though Exact Sciences Corporation is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
There are gaps in the product range sold by the company. This lack of choice can give a new competitor a foothold in the market.
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 Exact Sciences Corporation is not very good at demand forecasting thus end up keeping higher inventory both in-house and in channel.
Need more investment in new technologies. Given the scale of expansion and different geographies the company is planning to expand into, Exact Sciences 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.
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. Exact Sciences Corporation has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.

Opportunities for Exact Sciences Corporation – External Strategic Factors

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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.
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 Exact Sciences 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.
The market development will lead to dilution of competitor’s advantage and enable Exact Sciences Corporation to increase its competitiveness compare to the other competitors.
New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the Exact Sciences Corporation . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
The new technology provides an opportunity to Exact Sciences 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.
Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided Exact Sciences Corporation an opportunity to enter a new emerging market.
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 Exact Sciences Corporation in other product categories.
Decreasing cost of transportation because of lower shipping prices can also bring down the cost of Exact Sciences 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.

Threats Exact Sciences 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 Exact Sciences 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.
Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to Exact Sciences Corporation’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.
Rising raw material can pose a threat to the Exact Sciences Corporation profitability.
Liability laws in different countries are different and Exact Sciences Corporation may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
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.
No regular supply of innovative products – Over the years the company has developed numerous products but those are often response to the development by other players. Secondly the supply of new products is not regular thus leading to high and low swings in the sales number over period of time.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for Exact Sciences 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 Exact Sciences 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 Exact Sciences 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 Exact Sciences 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 Exact Sciences 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)