Many companies use an excellent business analysis when they are engaged in strategic planning to help understand the position of the company. This strategic tool is called the SWOT analysis:
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats
The SWOT analysis serves to help you understand the strategic positioning of your practice and patients/customers in the community. It is important to get a clear picture of the practice so that you can focus on your strengths, work to remedy weaknesses, and take advantage of opportunities while avoiding any threats to the practice. To facilitate this four-step process, Levin Group recommends the following guidelines.
Strengths
Dr. Roger P. Levin.
Meet with your team and develop a list of all the strengths of the practice. Talk about how these strengths have an impact on the following key areas:
- Patients
- Referrals
- Case acceptance
- Increased practice revenue
- Long-term growth of the practice
- Practice reputation
Weaknesses
Take a realistic look at the practice weaknesses. This is more difficult because team members will frequently avoid being candid for fear of offending the doctor. Keep in mind that while many team members have a very strong dedication to their work, they often expect the doctors to have all the answers.
As I often mention to doctors, it is very lonely when you are the one who is supposed to have all the answers, especially on those occasions when you don’t necessarily have them. Encourage your team to speak up and make a list of all the weaknesses they see in the practice. Ask each of them to carry a pad around for 30 days and every time they see a weakness to list it so that they can begin to develop a sense of what could be improved in the practice. This discussion needs to be very frank in order to be effective in the identification of weaknesses in the practice.
Opportunities
I have yet to see a dental practice that does not have significant opportunities in a number of areas. Regardless of your volume, how far out you are scheduled, or how good your overall production and profit appear, there are always opportunities to enhance the production, profitability, quality of care, and daily doctor and team satisfaction levels in the practice. A few areas to address include:
- How can you schedule more efficiently?
- What new services can you provide?
- How can you close more cases?
- How can you increase speed without decreasing quality using new technology?
These and other questions should be investigated when creatively thinking about opportunities for the practice.
Threats
Threats must be assessed. What could go wrong in your practice? This could include loss of team members, an insufficient flow of new patients, not having sufficient case acceptance, changes in insurance reimbursements, declines in the economy, dental practices coming into your community, etc. Pay special attention to the area of threats, as they often come as a surprise to practices and inevitably at the worst times.
Strategic positioning
Once you have completed a SWOT analysis, you can begin to understand a little better the position of your practice in the community. As you go through the SWOT analysis, try to understand how your practice is viewed in the community today and what you want tomorrow. Use the information from the SWOT analysis to clarify your practice vision. Determine the category that best describes your practice:
- Convenient practice
- Cosmetic practice
- Young practice
- Mature practice
- Expensive practice
- Inexpensive but high-volume practice
- Implant practice
- Comprehensive practice
Once you have determined the category or categories that apply to your practice, work to bring your practice vision to life.
It is essential to complete a SWOT analysis in order to understand your strategic positioning in the community. Once this is accomplished, you know how to act on the opportunities that you have identified using your strengths while avoiding the impact of weaknesses and threats. Use strategic analysis to continue to enhance your practice and secure your future growth and success.
Dr. Roger P. Levin is CEO of Levin Group, a leading practice management and marketing consulting firm. To contact him or to join the 40,000 dental professionals who receive his Practice Production Tip of the Day, visit LevinGroup.com or email [email protected].
The comments and observations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of DrBicuspid.com, nor should they be construed as an endorsement or admonishment of any particular idea, vendor, or organization.
