HCA Healthcare, Inc. SWOT Analysis / Matrix

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SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that can be used by HCA Healthcare, Inc. managers to do a situational analysis of the organization . It is a handy technique to evalauate the present Strengths (S), Weakness (W), Opportunities (O) & Threats (T) HCA Healthcare, Inc. is facing in its current business environment.

The HCA Healthcare, Inc. is one of the leading companies in its industry. HCA Healthcare, Inc. maintains its prominent position in market by carefully 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 enables 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 HCA Healthcare, Inc. to develop four types of strategies:

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

HCA Healthcare, Inc. swot analysis / matrix

SWOT Matrix Strategies Objective

The central purpose of SWOT matrix is to identify the strategies that a firm can utilize to exploit external opportunities, counter threats, and build on & protect HCA Healthcare, Inc. strengths, and eradicate its weaknesses.

Step by Step Guide to HCA Healthcare, Inc. SWOT Analysis

Strengths of HCA Healthcare, Inc. – Internal Strategic Factors

As one of the leading companies in its industry, HCA Healthcare, Inc. 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 HCA Healthcare, Inc. are –

Read - HCA Healthcare, Inc. Porter 5 Forces Analysis & Industry Analysis
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Automation of activities brought consistency of quality to HCA Healthcare, Inc. products and has enabled the company to scale up and scale down based on the demand conditions in the market.
Strong Brand Portfolio – Over the years HCA Healthcare, Inc. has invested in building a strong brand portfolio. The SWOT analysis of HCA Healthcare, Inc. just underlines this fact. This brand portfolio can be extremely useful if the organization wants to expand into new product categories.
Successful track record of developing new products – product innovation.
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.
Good Returns on Capital Expenditure – HCA Healthcare, Inc. is relatively successful at execution of new projects and generated good returns on capital expenditure by building new revenue streams.
Highly successful at Go To Market strategies for its products.
Strong Free Cash Flow – HCA Healthcare, Inc. has strong free cash flows that provide resources in the hand of the company to expand into new projects.
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.

Weakness of HCA Healthcare, Inc. – Internal Strategic Factors

Weakness are the areas where HCA Healthcare, Inc. can improve upon. Strategy is about making choices and weakness are the areas where a company can improve using SWOT analysis and build on its competitive advantage and strategic positioning.

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Organization structure is only compatible with present business model thus limiting expansion in adjacent product segments.
Limited success outside core business – Even though HCA Healthcare, Inc. is one of the leading organizations in its industry it has faced challenges in moving to other product segments with its present culture.
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. HCA Healthcare, Inc. has to build internal feedback mechanism directly from sales team on ground to counter these challenges.
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.
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.
The profitability ratio and Net Contribution % of HCA Healthcare, Inc. are below the industry average.
Not highly successful at integrating firms with different work culture. As mentioned earlier even though HCA Healthcare, Inc. is successful at integrating small companies it has its share of failure to merge firms that have different work culture.

Opportunities for HCA Healthcare, Inc. – External Strategic Factors

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The new taxation policy can significantly impact the way of doing business and can open new opportunity for established players such as HCA Healthcare, Inc. to increase its profitability.
Economic uptick and increase in customer spending, after years of recession and slow growth rate in the industry, is an opportunity for HCA Healthcare, Inc. to capture new customers and increase its market share.
New trends in the consumer behavior can open up new market for the HCA Healthcare, Inc. . It provides a great opportunity for the organization to build new revenue streams and diversify into new product categories too.
Opening up of new markets because of government agreement – the adoption of new technology standard and government free trade agreement has provided HCA Healthcare, Inc. 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 HCA Healthcare, Inc. in other product categories.
Lower inflation rate – The low inflation rate bring more stability in the market, enable credit at lower interest rate to the customers of HCA Healthcare, Inc..
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.
Government green drive also opens an opportunity for procurement of HCA Healthcare, Inc. products by the state as well as federal government contractors.

Threats HCA Healthcare, Inc. 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.
Liability laws in different countries are different and HCA Healthcare, Inc. may be exposed to various liability claims given change in policies in those markets.
Changing consumer buying behavior from online channel could be a threat to the existing physical infrastructure driven supply chain model.
Shortage of skilled workforce in certain global market represents a threat to steady growth of profits for HCA Healthcare, Inc. in those markets.
Growing strengths of local distributors also presents a threat in some markets as the competition is paying higher margins to the local distributors.
Rising raw material can pose a threat to the HCA Healthcare, Inc. profitability.
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.
Imitation of the counterfeit and low quality product is also a threat to HCA Healthcare, Inc.’s product especially in the emerging markets and low income markets.

Limitations of SWOT Analysis for HCA Healthcare, Inc.

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 HCA Healthcare, Inc.
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 HCA Healthcare, Inc.

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 HCA Healthcare, Inc. 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 HCA Healthcare, Inc.

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)