AstraZeneca Report: Customer Needs, Training, and HR Roles

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of AstraZeneca, a British-Swedish biopharmaceutical company. It begins with an introduction to the organization, its background, and core values, followed by an identification of its customers and their expectations. The report then delves into macro and micro environmental analyses, employing PESTLE and SWOT frameworks to assess political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors, as well as internal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A significant portion of the report is dedicated to the importance of training and development within AstraZeneca, highlighting its significance and benefits. The role and responsibilities of an HR manager are also explored, specifying the necessary skills and knowledge required for the position. The report concludes by outlining the training and development needs that must be considered to enhance employee capabilities and achieve organizational goals. This report is a valuable resource for understanding the business strategies and HR practices of AstraZeneca, providing insights into its customer relationships, market analysis, and employee development initiatives.

ASTRAZENECA
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Background of organisation...................................................................................................3
Identification of customers and their anticipations................................................................3
Macro and micro analysis of business....................................................................................4
Explicate training and development along with its significance............................................5
Explicate significance of HR manager within AstraZeneca...................................................6
Specify the knowledge and skills required for carrying out role............................................6
Illustrate training and development needs that must be considered.......................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8
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Introduction
Organisations are accountable for fulfilling requirements of their customers for this it
becomes important for them to identify their consumers along with the market needs. Further, by
considering these aspects training has to be given to employees so that they can excel within
their liabilities (Romasanta, van der Sijde and van Muijlwijk-Koezen, 2020). This report is based
on AstraZeneca that is a British-Swedish biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical organisation.
This report will provide insight into certain aspects that organisation considers like micro, macro
and needs of customers. Further, significance of training and development will also be specified.
Background of organisation
AstraZeneca was founded on April 6th, 1999 and provides their customers with different
products for accomplishment of their requirements. Certain information related with the firm is
specified beneath:
Sector: AstraZeneca deals within biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry.
Size: The organisation delivers their services at global levels with near around 70,600
employees for accomplishing needs of their customers.
Structure: It is a Public limited company and matrix structure is being followed by the
firm (AstraZeneca, 2021). Matrix organisational structure refers to integration of organisational
structures to furnish balance to them.
Goals: They aims at inspiring next generation related with science. They want to elevate
as well as explicate science for prevention and treating disease by rendering standards aligned
and hand-on STEM learning activities (STEM at AstraZeneca, 2021).
Mission: AstraZeneca wants to push boundaries of science for delivering life-saving
medicines. They deliver personalised healthcare that is related with giving right medicine to right
patient.
Values: AstraZeneca follows science by putting their patients first and they play to win.
They do right thing and are entrepreneurial.
Identification of customers and their anticipations
The consumers of AstraZeneca are dispensing doctors, non-dispensing doctors,
community pharmacies and hospitals. The customers expects to have direct medicines from their
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agency partners as it enables them to have effectual channels of interaction along with having
precise understanding related with needs of their customers.
Macro and micro analysis of business
Organisation delivers their services in different environments and for attaining their goals
it becomes important to analyse both of them to deliver their services as per the market needs. In
this context, with reference to AstraZeneca the micro and macro analysis is specified below:
Macro analysis: The aggregation of conditions and factors that possess capability for
impacting organisation positively and negatively is referred to as macro environment. It denotes
external business environment that provides organisation with opportunities and also creates
threats (de Lima and et. al, 2020). With reference to AstraZeneca, the Pestle analysis will be
utilised for carrying out macro analysis and it is specified beneath:
Political factors: There is higher uncertainty because of BREXIT. The government is
spending a lot on healthcare programs like Modi-Care and Obama-care. This creates a
pessimistic impact on the sales of AstraZeneca.
Economic factors: Relevant steps are being taken up by Trump government for
decreasing the prices of drugs. In addition to this, deteriorating returns on research and
development investments impacts pharmaceutical industry.
Social factors: The aging population will lead AstraZeneca to have greater opportunities
for growth. Income levels are increasing which will have positive influence on the prices of
medicines. Further, there is relevant increase within number of patients who are suffering from
diseases that are caused via urban lifestyle.
Technological factors: AstraZeneca can make investments within building up innovation
centre for promoting quality manufacturing. Furthermore, tracking system and artificial
intelligence will aid within discovery of drug and tackling the counterfeits.
Legal factors: There is significant influence of GDPR on development as well as
operating drugs (Wang and Jie, 2020). Alterations have been made within corporate tax rates
across USA and decline within the drug approval form from regulatory bodies will create
pessimistic impact on AstraZeneca.
Environmental factors: AstraZeneca has taken up the leadership role for tackling global
climate alterations.
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Micro analysis: This involves all the factors that leads to affect strategies of business
performance and decision making. For carrying out this analysis, AstraZeneca can opt for having
a SWOT analysis, this is specified beneath:
Strengths Weaknesses
 AstraZeneca is active in more than 100
countries with rapid decision making
and are streamlined because of
diligence processing.
 The organisation have opted to make
higher investments within R&D and
have a dedicated team for doing so.
 Product portfolio of AstraZeneca
comprises of cardiovascular,
respiratory, cancer, inflammation,
gastrointestinal, neuroscience and
infection medicines.
 Over 1 billion dollar sales of ten
products.
 In case of Cefotan, AstraZeneca was
affected due to shortage of drugs.
 Legal proceedings associated with
pricing and patient’s issues have
impacted their image (Mamun and Al,
2020).
 Performance is affected due to product
discontinuation.
Opportunities Threats
 AstraZeneca can leverage their strong
presence within the emerging markets.
 Enhanced significance of biosimiler
market
 Significant increase within global
ageing population.
 Stringent guidelines for drug
development
 High competition is coming with
efficient drugs.
 Seroquel, the blockbuster drug is facing
high threat for copycat of generic
drugs.
Explicate training and development along with its significance
The educational activities in the organisation that are formulated for enhancing skills and
knowledge of the employees while rendering instructions along with information for performing
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better within peculiar tasks is defined as training and development. Training is process to
upgrade skills, knowledge and competencies possessed by employees. Development is long term
view for rendering learning opportunities (Maheshwari and et. al, 2017). Training and
development is significant for AstraZeneca as it will enable them to utilise resources
appropriately, eliminate the wastage, enhanced profitability and competitiveness. It also aids
within minimisation of employee turnover rate along with development of affirmative attitude.
Explicate significance of HR manager within AstraZeneca
Human resource manager is of importance for organisation within myriad areas that
range from strategic planning to the image development. Within AstraZeneca, HR manager
possesses expertise to render different services to their employees. In this context, certain aspects
have been specified:
 Strategic management
 Wages and salaries
 Analysis of benefits
 Safety and risk management
 Minimisation of liability issues
 Employee satisfaction
 Training and development
These are some liabilities that are carried out by HR manager within the AstraZeneca to
ensure that firm is able to deliver their liabilities appropriately.
Specify the knowledge and skills required for carrying out role
HR manager requires to have distinct skills for carrying out their duties in an appropriate
manner. They are specified below:
 Communication skill: It is important for HR manager to express themselves clearly both
written and oral. Within AstraZeneca, they have to deal with different people and listen
to their issues.
 Decision making: HR manager is involved within formulation of decision making like
recruitment process in which they have to decide the applicant who will fit within the
role (Mohammed and Quddus, 2019).
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Illustrate training and development needs that must be considered
To acknowledge this aspect, HR manager of AstraZeneca needs to conduct analysis of
different entities through which they can understand needs of the training &development. This
comprises, organisational, person, work or task, performance, content and training suitability
analysis (Uppin, 2020). Through this HR manager of the organisation will be able to identify the
exact requirements and accordingly take decisions so that capabilities of employees can be
enhanced so that overall goals can be attained.
Conclusion
From above it has been inferred that organisation deals within different sector and have
their vision and goals for attaining them they need to give their best efforts by considering the
needs of the marketplace. Further, it is important to analyse both micro and macro factors that
will create impact on the firm and accordingly they have to formulate strategies so that they can
withstand the competition.
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References
Books & Journals
de Lima, C.S. and et. al, 2020. An Updated Review of Macro, Micro, and Nanostructured
Hydrogels for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Applications. Pharmaceutics, 12(10),
p.970.
Maheshwari, V. and et. al, 2017. Exploring HR practitioners’ perspective on employer branding
and its role in organisational attractiveness and talent management. International Journal
of Organizational Analysis.
Mamun, M. and Al, A., 2020. Profitability Analysis of Pharmaceutical Industry in
Bangladesh. Journal of Economics and Business, 3(4).
Mohammed, D. and Quddus, A., 2019. HR ANALYTICS: A modern tool in hr for predictive
decision making. Journal of Management, 6(3).
Romasanta, A.K.S., van der Sijde, P. and van Muijlwijk-Koezen, J., 2020. Innovation in
pharmaceutical R&D: mapping the research landscape. Scientometrics, 125(3), pp.1801-
1832.
Uppin, C., 2020. Study of benefits of HR automation in organisations.
Wang, M. and Jie, F., 2020. Managing supply chain uncertainty and risk in the pharmaceutical
industry. Health services management research, 33(3), pp.156-164.
Online
AstraZeneca. 2021. [Online]. Available through: <
https://www.theofficialboard.com/org-chart/astrazeneca >.
STEM at AstraZeneca. 2021. [Online]. Available through: <
https://www.astrazeneca.com/r-d/our-approach/stem-at-astrazeneca.html >.
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