Summative Assessment Case study Sample

Introduction of Summative Assessment Case study

Business strategy is a strategic initiative of business pursues to build value for the company and its stakeholders to achieve a competitive advantage in the market. Business strategy is essential for success of the business. The report will outline about the organizational issues of the Visiting Angels, a home care service provider organization. The service registered by CQC on 5 May 2022. To identify the issue different tools or framework including SWOT, PESTLE and Michael Porter will used. Further according to the analysis, the report will provide recommendation to overcome the issues efficiently.

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Main Body

Home care is a supportive care provided organization that provide services where the client or patient living, usually emphasis on providing paramedical helps through professional caregivers and proper assistance in daily living for ill and disability. The agency established in 1998 by Jeffrey Johnson in Baltimore, Maryland. The main purpose of agency is furnishing high-quality as well as non-medical home care services to the individual and seniors in need (Visiting Angels, Quality at Home care, 2024).

PESTLE Analysis

PESTLE analysis refers to the study of external factors that directly and indirectly influence operation and strategic decisions of the business. Following is the PESTLE analysis of Visiting Angels:

• Political: The factor includes rules and regulations of the government. Visiting Angels expands its services of home care in various countries including USA, Canada, South Korea and Mexico and so more. The organization has to adhere rules and regulations related to healthcare services of each country as non-compliance leads to impacts negatively.
• Economic: It includes factors such as employment rate, economy growth, inflation, interest rate and so more. Inflation rate in the UK is 1.7 % that is decline by 2.2% from previous month leads to increase disposable income of people (United Kingdom Inflation Rate,2024). Disposable income influences spending of customer on non-essential services such as home care. Rise in disposable income enable the families to take home care services for elder, therefore increase demand for Visiting Angels. Further, 4.1% unemployment rate in UK affects labor supply and wage level. This rate leading to increase wages and increase operation cost for agency to get skilled caregivers.
• Social: It includes factors such as demographics, preference and demand of the people. Currently, family structure changes as several elderly people less like to prefer living with their children as a result demand for the assistance and care service providing agency increases. Further, due to changes in lifestyle several elderly people prefer to live independent correspondingly it controls the demand for home care services.
• Technological: In the era of digitalization, each business adopts technology for smooth operation. For instance, Visiting Angel use technology to delivered its services more effectively, referring to this it provides services of virtual consultant and telehealth. It uses different client management and scheduling software leads to enhance its efficiency (Philip et al, 2021). Use of several technologies and introduction of new techniques leads to increase cost of operation for Visiting Angels as it requires updates and proper maintenance.
• Environmental: Presently, people become eco and health conscious as a result they demand more sustainable practices within a business. It is crucial for the Visiting Angels to operate its home care considering sustainable practices such as sourcing eco-friendly products, using organic food and using sustainable practices. Currently, clients are looking for the home care that operates in eco-conscious manner.
• Legal: It includes all government law related to employment, providing home care services, data and privacy concerns and so more. Company needs to follow employment law related to minimum wage rate, non-compliance can cause penalty and fines leads to increase operation cost. Visiting Angels need to compliance with Data Protection Law 2018 to protect personal information of the clients and care service taker (Lynskey, 2020).

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a framework for recognizing as well as evaluating strengths, weakness, opportunities as well as threats of the business. The SWOT analysis of Visiting Angels is as under:

Strengths

• Personalization and Flexibility: One of the strengths of Visiting Angel is its effective services offering according to the particular preference and needs of each patients including medical condition and lifestyle (Gomes, 2020). This improves quality of care as well as patient-provider relationship and efficiency of the treatment.
• Innovation and technology: Visiting Angel strength of using latest technologies and software related to client management and scheduling aids the agency to enhance its services and operations (Foong et al, 2020). Utilization of AI aids in scheduling and optimize care giver assignments and routes as well as doing billing and reporting, leads to free up time to emphasis on furnishing direct care.
• Skilled and Competent caregivers: Visiting Angels have team of skilled and competent caregivers that provides effective services to client while offering physical and emotional support. This strength makes the organization different from others in market.

Weaknesses

• High cost of operation: One of weakness of Visiting Angel is high cost of operations including acquiring medical insurance, equipments, doing marketing, using technologies as well as compliance with several rules and regulations. Home care services required navigating complex healthcare regulation as well as have to invest in timely training for the staff to ensure adherence of all guidelines. It leads to increase operation cost that significantly impact profitability.
• Retaining Staff: Retaining skilled and qualified staff is one of weakness of the Visiting Angels. The low pay rates, lack of increase in pay as well as living cost crises in UK enable the healthcares to look for alternative jobs. Lack of retention of staff also impacts morale of others employees as a result care services impacted (Li et al, 2021).

Opportunities

• Partnership and collaboration: Visiting Angels has opportunity to collaborate and partner with different stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem including clinics, hospitals, laboratories and pharmacies (Davies et al, 2022). This aids the home care service providers to increase its number of clients or patients which is crucial for getting competitive advantage in the competitive industry.
• Diversification and expansion: One of opportunity to Visiting Angel is expanding and diversify its offerings as well as target markets to cater the changing preference and needs of the clients. Visiting Angel has opportunity to offer preventive, palliative and wellness services under different segments including mental health and pediatrics.
• Aging Population: The increasing number of the senior citizen provides a significant opportunity to the Visiting Angels to expand its client base as well as services. The growing population of senior citizen increase demand for the home care service providers.

Threats

• Intense Competition: One of the threats faced by the Visiting Angel is intense competition in the UK between home care companies. The main competitors are Comfort Keepers, Care. Com, FRS as well as Right at Home. The availability of several competitors in market significantly impacts demand of client as well as make pressure on the pricing and service offering.
• Healthcare policy changes: One of the threat organization faces is related to changes in healthcare policies and funding, significantly impacts service delivery and reimbursement. The lack of adoption of changing healthcare policies put agency into difficulty cause harming brand image.
• Cybersecurity and data breaches: Company has threat regarding protecting personal data of the customers. It is crucial for Visiting Angels to protect their system and data from cyber attacks as well as data breaches, non-protection can break employee and customer trust. It is little difficult because of high frequency of cyber threats and complexities of devices and technologies use.
• Economic Fluctuations: Downturn in economy leads to impacts clients’ capacity to afford home care services. Correspondingly, declines demand for the service providers (Bayliss and Gideon, 2020).

Michael Porter

Michael Porter`s five forces used to evaluate and recognize competitive forces of the industry. The analysis of industry is as under:

• The threat of new entrants: In the home care industry of the UK, the threat of new entrants is moderate to low due to several reason as a result provides competitive advantage to the Visiting Angels. One of the causes is moderate entry barriers including licensing as well as fulfillment of several rules and regulation. In addition, to enter the industry there is requirement of sufficient capital to successfully establish as well as operate home care agency. The Visiting Angels is well-known in UK market and good brand image as a result it has less or no threats to new entrants.
• Supplier Bargaining Power: The bargaining power of the supplier in home care is relatively less due to availability of several home care, existence of substitutes and so more. This leads to unable the home care services to increase their prices because increase will switch the individual to cheaper alternatives.
• Customer Bargaining Power: In the home care service provider industry, there is high bargaining power of the customer. The reason of greater power of bargaining includes less switching cost, price sensitivity, availability of substitute as well as product differentiation. In UK, various homecare services are available as a result increase in price by one agency can able the client to switch to other homer care service provider as there is zero cost of switching.
• Threat of Substitution: The threat of substitution is relatively law because of limited alternatives as well as service of personalized care. In the industry, for people with special requirements and seniors, home care services is the best option as compared to the other available services such as assisted living facilities and nursing home. In addition, Visiting Angels furnish personalized home care service as well as one-on-one according to medical requirement and considering mental and physical support needed by the patients. These services of Visiting Angels can`t be copy by any other as a result agency have less threat of substitution correspondingly enjoy competitive advantage within industry.
• Competitive Rivalry: In the home care industry of UK, there is moderate to high rivalry among the existing competitors which is one of the great challenges for the Visiting Angels. The main existing competitors are Right at Home, FRS and so more as well as with growing demand for home care services due to change in demographics several competitors likely to enter the market, results in intensifying competition (Gordon et al, 2020). Service differentiation as well as competitors strategies related to the pricing, marketing, quality of care makes the competition more intense.

Thus, Visiting Angels must decide price, service offering according to the competitive forces in the industry. This evaluation aids the home care service provide to analyze the attractiveness of the industry as well as effectively pinpoint the areas where it needs to adjust strategy to enhance its competitive advantage as well as profitability.

The evaluation of SWOT, PESTLE and Porter`s five forces several issues of Visiting Angels identified such as high competition make difficult for the company to increase its customer base and market share. In addition, high cost of operation, difficulty in retained staff and so more increase company profitability as well as offering quality services to the patient and clients. Also, greater bargaining of power of customer creates issues of more switching of customer to other competitors, greatly impacts competitive advantage of the Visiting Angels. Therefore, it is important for the Visiting Angels to take appropriate actions to get competitive advantage in the industry.

Recommendation (Low-cost module as strategy)

These are some of recommendations that need to follow by the Visiting Angels to overcome its issues in an effective and efficient manner. The recommendations are:

• It is recommended to the Visiting Angels to effectively use porter`s generic low-cost module strategy to overcome the issue of high competition in the industry. It is a pricing strategy in which an organization relatively charge low price to increase demand and gain a greater market share (Polus, 2022). It is advised to visiting angel, to charge low price for homecare services related to personal care, medical help, bathing, providing physical and emotional support as compared to its competitors. It leads to grab attention of wide range of clients or patient as a result agency able to increase its revenue as well as customer base and market share. The low-price strategy aids Visiting Angels to be differentiate by others home care providers.
• To use low-cost strategy means charging less price from customer, it is advised to the Visiting Angels to invest in new and emerging technologies. It is useful tool for home care providing agencies to enhance efficiency, lowering cost as well as enhancing service quality. Company can use AI, electronic health records to manage information and schedule time, resulting in enhance outcome and decline cost (Shimonski, 2020).
• To overcome the issue of high bargaining power of customer, Visiting Angel must charge low price for its assistance services as compared to the competitors. When home care agency charge less price that it declines chances for customer to switch to other home care providers. This strategy aids the business to increase customer base as a result company profitability automatically increase and company enjoys great competitive advantage in the market.
• Visiting Angel must use a cost-saving measures as well as efficient operational practices to manage its expenses regardless compromising on care quality. For instance, to decline the cost of training company should use cost effective training methods such as on-the-job training, mentorship it aids in provide low cost and efficient home care services to the potential clients (Roomi, 2024). In addition, marketing is another reason of high cost of operation, therefore to market home care services, Visiting Angel must use a social media marketing to grab the attention of potential customers.
• To overcome the issue of retaining staff, it is highly suggested to the Visiting Angels to provide growth opportunities and motivations to the employees, helpful in retaining staff as a result declines cost of the operation. To retain the employees home care service provider must encourage employees in cost-effective manner such as praising their efforts, appreciating in front of all members, providing recognition aids in giving feeling of valued and respected (Mamun and Khan, 2020). It leads to help in retain the employees correspondingly aids in decline cost of operation, offering quality care services at low cost as compare to the competitors.

Conclusion

By summing up all, it has been concluded that implementation of effective business strategy aids business to gain competitive advantage in the market. The present report based on Visiting Angels home care service providing organization of UK. The evaluation of PESTLE analysis it is evaluated that various external factors impact the business-like economic factor influence demand for the business. Further, with the help of SWOT analysis, it is outlined that company face issue regarding to high operating cost and retaining of skilled employees. In addition, via Michael Porter`s five force identified that high competition is one of issue of agency. To overcome the issues the report highlighted some of recommendations such as using low-cost strategy to grab more clients as compared to competitors, using cost effective training and marketing methods to decline cost of operations and charging less price.

References

Books and Journals

• Bayliss, K. and Gideon, J., 2020. The privatisation and financialisation of social care in the UK.SOAS Department of Economics Working Paper,238, pp.2022-10.
• Davies, K., Dalgarno, E., Angel, C., Davies, S., Hughes, J., Chester, H., Jasper, R., Roberts, A. and Challis, D., 2022. Home‐care providers as collaborators in commissioning arrangements for older people.Health & Social CARE in the community,30(2), pp.644-655.
• Fathollahi-Fard, A.M., Hajiaghaei-Keshteli, M., Tavakkoli-Moghaddam, R. and Smith, N.R., 2022. Bi-level programming for home health care supply chain considering outsourcing.Journal of Industrial Information Integration,25, p.100246.
• Foong, P.S., Lim, C.A., Wong, J., Lim, C.S., Perrault, S.T. and Koh, G.C., 2020, April. " You Cannot Offer Such a Suggestion" Designing for Family Caregiver Input in Home Care Systems. InProceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(pp. 1-13).
• Gomes, J.F., 2020. Exploring connected health business ecosystems through business models.
• Gordon, A.L., Goodman, C., Achterberg, W., Barker, R.O., Burns, E., Hanratty, B., Martin, F.C., Meyer, J., O’Neill, D., Schols, J. and Spilsbury, K., 2020. Commentary: COVID in care homes—challenges and dilemmas in healthcare delivery.Age and ageing,49(5), pp.701-705.
• Li, W., Yigitcanlar, T., Erol, I. and Liu, A., 2021. Motivations, barriers and risks of smart home adoption: From systematic literature review to conceptual framework.Energy Research & Social Science,80, p.102211.
• Mamun, M.Z.A. and Khan, M.Y.H., 2020. A Theoretical Study On Factors Influencing Employees Performance, Rewards And Motivation Within Organisation.
• Philip, N.Y., Rodrigues, J.J., Wang, H., Fong, S.J. and Chen, J., 2021. Internet of Things for in-home health monitoring systems: Current advances, challenges and future directions.IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications,39(2), pp.300-310.
• Polus, E., 2022. Cost leadership or differentiation: strategies for a Finnish lighting small enterprise.
• Roomi, M.A., 2024. Strategic Cost Management in a Competitive Landscape: Optimizing Costs, Driving Value, and Achieving Sustainable Advantage.Research Studies of Business,2(01), pp.10-19.
• Shimonski, R., 2020.AI in healthcare: how artificial intelligence is changing IT operations and infrastructure services. John Wiley & Sons.

Online

• Visiting Angels, Quality at Home care. 2024. Online. Available through: < https://www.visiting-angels.co.uk/ >
• United Kingdom Inflation Rate. 2024. Online. Available through: < https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/inflation-cpi#:~:text=More%20than%20Expected-,Annual%20inflation%20rate%20in%20the%20UK%20fell%20to%201.7%25%20in,air%20fares%20and%20motor%20fuels.>

Author Bio

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