Critical Analysis of Business Strategy: East and North Herts NHS Trust

This report provides a comprehensive strategic analysis of the East and North Herts NHS Trust, examining its business strategy through the lenses of 5C, SWOT, PESTLE, and VRIO analyses. It identifies key strategic issues within the broad environment, industry environment, and resource capabilities of the trust, including challenges related to patient care, financial performance, and IT infrastructure. The analysis highlights the trust's strengths, such as a stable management team and specialist services, while also pinpointing weaknesses like cyber security vulnerabilities and capacity limitations. Opportunities for improvement are explored, such as enhancing bed resources and leveraging political support. The report concludes with strategic options and recommendations, including the development of transparent policies, effective collaboration with local healthcare services, recruitment of knowledgeable staff, and investments in IT infrastructure, to enhance the trust's performance and address identified challenges.

Running head: BUSINESS STRATEGY (MANAGEMENT)
An exploration and critical analysis of East and North Herts NHS Trust
Name of the Student
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Author Note

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Executive Summary
Situational analysis of an organization allows their management to identify the present strength
and weakness and observe threats in order to get knowledge about the opportunity to porper in
the future. In this business report, the two situational analysis tool that is 5C analysis and SWOT
analysis is taken into consideration. Through this snalysi it has been found that the organization
East and North Herts NHS Trust serves the people of UK with quality medical care facility.
Though there are many threats like poor treatment quality for the accident and emergency
patients especially during the festival season. There were lack of bed resources for the critical
patients and several operations also got postponed due to the same factor. It has been also found
that through the organization have good financial reputation, they were failed to meet their target
to attend emergency patients. They also face loss once due to cyber attack and this represents the
poor maintenance of the data managed within the organization. This report highlights the
qualitative and quantitative data for some of the strategic issues and desired recommendations is
also made so that the performance of the organization can be improved.

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Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction................................................................................................................................3
2.0 Discussion..................................................................................................................................4
2.1 Theories related to Strategic Situational Analysis.................................................................4
2.1.1 5C analysis......................................................................................................................4
2.1.2 SWOT Analysis..............................................................................................................6
2.1.3 PESTLE analysis-...........................................................................................................7
2.1.4 VRIO-.............................................................................................................................8
2.2 Identified strategic issues facing the business:......................................................................9
2.2.1 Issues in broad environment...........................................................................................9
2.2.2 Issues in industry environment.....................................................................................10
2.2.3 Issues in resources and capabilities..............................................................................13
3.0 Strategic options or recommendations.....................................................................................15
3.1 Developing transparent policies..........................................................................................15
3.2 Effective collaboration with local heath care services........................................................15
3.3 Recruitment of knowledgeable staffs..................................................................................16
3.4 Attainable changes in policies.............................................................................................16
3.5 Development of IT department and modern IT technology................................................16
4.0 Conclusion...............................................................................................................................17
5.0 Reference List and Bibliography.............................................................................................18

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1.0 Introduction
The situation analysis plays an important role in analyzing the strengths and weakness of
an organization along with its threats and opportunity to prosper in future. Ginter et al. (2018)
stated that this assessment also allows the company to focus on important details like actual size
of the audience and noticing the positive traits in them through which the business can be
improved. This assessment is also important for analyzing the business environment and the
ability of the contenders. (Kotler 2015) highlighted that many business people consider
assessments for product’s situation, situation of the competitions, distribution situations,
opportunity and issue analysis and evaluation of environmental factors. The organization taken
into consideration for this business report is East and North Herts NHS Trust. East and North
Herts NHS Trust were established in the year 2000 and serves medical treatment and care
services to the communal. This human care organization is best known for their every kind of
simple and chronicle diseases, blood test equipments, maternity, radiology services and
outpatient appointment services (Enherts-tr.nhs.uk 2018). Their strategy is based on their people,
patients and their experience. They have 75.2% of the staff survey engagement score and have
bullying and harassment score of 27% (Enherts-tr.nhs.uk 2018). Though they have 7.91%
vacancy rate and a turnover rate of 26.35% within first twelve months of service but they have
target set for each of these milestones in order to assess their organization’s performance and rate
their efficiency (Enherts-tr.nhs.uk 2018).
The two of the most important theories for strategic situation analysis in this report will
be the 5C analysis and SWOT analysis. Thus report also highlights the main strategic issue of the
considered organization in terms of issues in broad environment, industry environment and
resources and capabilities. A plan will be presented so as to overcome the existing issues and a

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recommendation section will highlight some of the strategies through which the suggested plan
can be improved for future benefits.
2.0 Discussion
2.1 Theories related to Strategic Situational Analysis
2.1.1 5C analysis
The major components of the 5C analysis are company, customers, competitors,
collaborators and climate.
2.1.1.1 Company
Sauria et al. (2015) stated that the main purpose for the analysis of company’s situation is
to emphasize on its vision, strategies, capabilities, culture, technology used and objectives.
Miyanji et al. (2018) furthermore depicted that if these aspects are carefully measured, then it
helps in understanding the current issues present in the organization and its future impacts if not
addressed. East and North Herts NHS Trust values their patient’s first and thrives for continuous
improvements that prove their excellence, they are also open and honest to everyone and prefer
to work collaboratively as a team.
2.1.1.2 Customers
In order to know about the target audience, market size, market growth, customer’s
behavior, buying patterns, average purchase size and preferred retail channels, understanding the
customer’s perspective is important (Skoog et al. 2017). The patients throughout the United
Kingdom are their customers. Moreover, due to their system for 4 hour treatment for the
emergency patients, people who are severely injured are their prime customers.

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2.1.1.3 Competitors
Montgomery (2017) depicted that though analysis of internal environment is important as
it provide knowledge of their capability to overcome any problem. However, external
environmental analysis is also important s it provides the ability of the competitors working with
the same business objectives. Kelley et al. (2015) furthermore stated that competitors analysis
involves competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, upcoming initiatives, market shares and
positioning. East and North Herts NHS Trust have several competitors- Barnet General Hospital,
Chase Farm Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital, North Middlesex Hospital, Royal Free
Hospital, University College Hospital, Whittington Hospital and others (Enherts-tr.nhs.uk 2018).
These hospitals are great in terms of customer service and post treatment check-ups. They also
have sufficient accommodation management for their patients.
2.1.1.4 Collaborators
Effective mutual partnership also plays an important role in attaining business
profitability and success. Ravaioli et al. (2014) stated that relationships with suppliers,
distributors, collaborators and business partners should also be assessed in order to find the
business problem easily. The East and North Herts NHS Trust have collaborated with many of
the local and established health care organizations of NGOs that are serving for humankind.
Some of their partners are- Age UK, Headway Hertfordshire, Macmillan Cancer Support,
Hertfordshire Society for the Blind, Breathe Easy – North Herts, Royal Voluntary Services
(RVS) and others (Enherts-tr.nhs.uk 2018).
2.1.1.5 Climate
Many businesspeople evaluates the macro-environmental factors to assess the “political”,
“economic”, “socio-cultural”, “technological”, “environmental”, and “legal scenarios” of the

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business (Kotler 2015). The concerned trust follows many legislation, and also policies of staffs.
The technological management and resource system of the concerned organization need to be
improved.
2.1.2 SWOT Analysis
2.1.2.1 Strengths
East and North Herts NHS Trust have the strength of stable management team, who are
liable for handling all the track records and also manages the potentially contentious change.
They also provide range of specialist service like ENT, renal and urological cancer, Vernon
Cancer Centre and plastics (Enherts-tr.nhs.uk 2018). They also have modern environments
system like post-spring 2015 QEII and recognized as clinically and financially sustainable
organization.
2.1.2.2 Weakness
There is a limitation of the business intelligence system resulting which the trust have
faced cyber attack from WannaCry attackers. Moreover, the trusts have lack of capacity that does
not allow them to overcome through any change efficiently. In addition to that, they also has lack
of strategic direction, infrastructure, capacity and investment through which facility like decision
support tools, patients records and Wi-Fi cannot be implemented (Enherts-tr.nhs.uk 2018). They
also lack strong clinical leadership due to which the organization often lacks strategic vision.
2.1.2.3 Opportunities
The trust is facing problem of lack of bed resources and thus, incorporating many of beds
for treatment of the critical patients can be an opportunity for the company. The trust also has the
involvement of political parties and thus initiating “Better Care Fund” through Commissioners’
integration strategy is also an effective opportunity (Enherts-tr.nhs.uk 2018). Growth from

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research activities through CRN and EAHSN and development of extra specialist service that
includes treatment for hyper-acute stroke, robotic surgery and PPCI should also be involved in
the existing business functions (Niederwieser et al. 2016).
2.1.2.4 Threats
The change in the financial climate can be one of the greatest threats that his trust is
currently facing. Series of bad news like forcing patients to lie on the floor, delayed A&E
treatments, harassment of the staffs and poor IT management have impacted their reputation
adversely (Enherts-tr.nhs.uk 2018). The trust takes more time to react on unmanaged and
unanticipated change that leads to the lack of proper growth in the market. Moreover, due to the
innovative change in medical science and cost reduction of the treatment cost in other hospitals,
there can be rise in the customer’s expectation (Enherts-tr.nhs.uk 2018).
2.1.3 PESTLE analysis-
Political
 UK has constitutional monarchy
therefore stable political situation.
 Prerogative government
 Brexit problem
 High corruption
Economic
Positive
 Second highest GDP in Europe
 Diversified economy
 flourishment in both public as well
as private sectors
 Growing FDI
 Slow recovery from economic
recession
 Increasing unemployment
Social Technological

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 Dense population that encourages
market investment
 High level income
 Skilled but cheap workforce.
 Increasing cost for both education
and training.
 High innovative skills
 High expertise in information
technology
 Internet availability at cheap price
 Strong telecommunication
infrastructure
 Slow advancement in compared to
the United States.
Legislative
 Strong legislative provisions for the
workplace discrimination
 Stable wage system
Environmental
 Strong environment policy
 excellent regulation in the
environmental issues
 promotion of sustainable
development
2.1.4 VRIO-
Value- value increases based on the quality of service or product. Here The East and North
Hertfordshire Trust needs to be innovative and more attentive to their services which will
definitely enhance their values to their customers.
Rarity- the industry infrastructure has high quality technological appliances for providing best
care for the patients. It cannot be availed by the clients in other local organizations.

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Imitability- the care and treatment which this institution provides, cannot be imitated. The
innovation and operation of the institution have provided it competitive advantage.
Organization- this institution is organized, prepared, and capable to exploit all the resources
available.
2.2 Identified strategic issues facing the business:
2.2.1 Issues in broad environment
Kabisch et al. (2015) stated that in an organization’s broad environment there are total of
six environment that consists- demographic, economic, natural, technological, political and
social-cultural environment.
The East and North Hertfordshire Trust suffered from staff harassment from their
management and colleagues. 52% of the total Trust’s staff opted for whistle-blowing concerns
and 85 of the Trust’s respondents says that they are conformable from the services that is
provided in their workplace. Apart from the harassment of the staffs, the patients were also ill
treated and forced to lie on the floor. There were lack of proper resource that is for the bed but in
order to treat all the patient, the officials of the organization have to force some of the patient’s
to lie on the floor. In such cases, there were people roaming in the hospitals stepped over these
patients (Mail Online 2018). Moreover, the staffs of the NHS hospital have also asked those
patients not to disclose their name of asked by someone.
It is found that for the year 2017, the East and North Hertfordshire Trust, did not meet
their financial year target and also faced the steep deterioration with a £28m deficit (Dunhill
2018). Apart from this economic loss of the trust, there is another bigger technology loophole
that was utilized by the cyber intruders. On May, 2017, “WannaCry” was the largest internet or
cyber crime occurred. This group of cyber intruder attacks established and wealthy forms and

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demand ransom for the crucial information that is present in the organization’s database. East
and North Herts NHS Trust are one of the organizations infected by WannaCry (Welwyn
Hatfield Times 2018). The cyber criminals selected this trust as it runs more than 80 NHS Trusts
and have much crucial information that should be kept confidential. The hackers infected the
system in such a way that Lister’s A&E emergency departments get diverted to other hospitals
and could not treat the emergency patients (Welwyn Hatfield Times 2018). The total financial
loss due to this cyber attack was £700,000among which total of £400,000 has not received by the
trust as the patients during this period were treated in other NHS hospitals and the remaining loss
of £300,000 is due to the fact that the organization did not attend any outpatient appointments
(Welwyn Hatfield Times 2018). It is also found that Forty of the 47 NHS organizations were
attacked by WannaCry Cyber Attack and they have also created interruption in the program that
many of the crucial operation gets cancelled. The action that was taken by the NHS trusts are that
the officials have invested £50 million in NHS cyber security centre so that they can find the
intruders (Campbell and Siddique 2018).
Another problem that was faced by the East and North Herts NHS trusts is that many
workers were listed to get the refund but have not received. The trusts have initiated “Widening
Access Training (WAT) scheme” in which the employees of the East and North Herts NHS
trusts have to give money from their main wage. However, after a certain time, it was revealed
that trusts have paused claims and also refuse them to get the refund. In the year 2016, 10,000s
of NHS workers were refused for the refund.
2.2.2 Issues in industry environment
It is found that the patients of the hospitals run by East and North Herts NHS Trust have
to wait longer than any other health care organization. It is also published in the new article that