1. What is our competitive advantage?
2. What resources do we have?
3. What products are performing well?
Companies may consider performing this step as a "white-boarding" or "sticky note" session. The idea is there is no right or wrong answer; all participants should be encouraged to share whatever thoughts they have. These ideas can later be discarded; in the meantime, the goal should be to come up with as many items as possible to invoke creativity and inspiration in others.
With the list of ideas within each category, it is now time to clean-up the ideas. By refining the thoughts that everyone had, a company can focus on only the best ideas or largest risks to the company. This stage may require substantial debate among analysis participants, including bringing in upper management to help rank priorities.
Armed with the ranked list of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, it is time to convert the SWOT analysis into a strategic plan. Members of the analysis team take the bulleted list of items within each category and create a synthesized plan that provides guidance on the original objective.
For example, the company debating whether to release a new product may have identified that it is the market leader for its existing product and there is the opportunity to expand to new markets. However, increased material costs, strained distribution lines, the need for additional staff, and unpredictable product demand may outweigh the strengths and opportunities. The analysis team develops the strategy to revisit the decision in six months in hopes of costs declining and market demand becoming more transparent.
Use a SWOT analysis to identify challenges affecting your business and opportunities that can enhance it. However, note that it is one of many techniques, not a prescription.
When preparing a SWOT analysis, several common mistakes can undermine its effectiveness. Let's take a look at some ways your SWOT analysis may go awry.
One easy error to make when preparing a SWOT analysis is failing to be objective and honest in the assessment. Companies often tend to overemphasize their strengths while downplaying weaknesses, resulting in an overly optimistic and unrealistic analysis. This bias can lead to missed opportunities for improvement and leave the organization vulnerable to unforeseen threats. As difficult as it may be to be honest in your analysis, the validity of underlying assumptions is the cornerstone of how useful the SWOT analysis will be.
Another significant mistake is conducting the analysis in isolation, without input from diverse key stakeholders . You should try get to input from employees at various levels, customers, suppliers, and industry experts. Each may have a unique view of your company, and each may come up with different items to be listed in each quadrant based on how they specifically interact with the company.
Yet another common pitfall is neglecting to prioritize or weight the factors identified in the SWOT analysis. Not all strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are equally important or impactful. Failing to distinguish between major and minor factors can lead to misallocation of resources and misguided strategic decisions. It can be easy for the important items to be buried if too many non-material items are identified.
Another frequent error is treating the SWOT analysis as a one-time exercise. You should be prepared to do a SWOT analysis periodically, The business environment is constantly changing, and a SWOT analysis should be regularly updated to remain relevant. In addition, the analysis itself is just the beginning; its true value lies in using the findings to develop and implement strategic actions. You can then check future SWOT analysis to make sure the company is addressing the major points.
A SWOT analysis won't solve every major question a company has. However, there's a number of benefits to a SWOT analysis that make strategic decision-making easier.
Let's perform a SWOT analysis together by analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of Tesla.
The four steps of SWOT analysis comprise the acronym SWOT: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. These four aspects can be broken into two analytical steps. First, a company assesses its internal capabilities and determines its strengths and weaknesses. Then, a company looks outward and evaluates external factors that impact its business. These external factors may create opportunities or threaten existing operations.
Creating a SWOT analysis involves identifying and analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of a company. It is recommended to first create a list of questions to answer for each element. The questions serve as a guide for completing the SWOT analysis and creating a balanced list. The SWOT framework can be constructed in list format, as free text, or, most commonly, as a 4-cell table, with quadrants dedicated to each element. Strengths and weaknesses are listed first, followed by opportunities and threats.
A SWOT analysis is used to strategically identify areas of improvement or competitive advantages for a company. In addition to analyzing thing that a company does well, SWOT analysis takes a look at more detrimental, negative elements of a business. Using this information, a company can make smarter decisions to preserve what it does well, capitalize on its strengths, mitigate risk regarding weaknesses, and plan for events that may adversely affect the company in the future.
While SWOT analysis is a powerful tool, it does have some limitations. It can sometimes oversimplify complex situations and is susceptible to the subjectivity and bias of participants. The analysis also doesn't provide specific guidance on how to address identified issues and can lead to analysis paralysis if not followed by concrete action.
A SWOT analysis is a great way to guide business-strategy meetings. It's powerful to have everyone in the room discuss the company's core strengths and weaknesses, define the opportunities and threats, and brainstorm ideas. Oftentimes, the SWOT analysis you envision before the session changes throughout to reflect factors you were unaware of and would never have captured if not for the group’s input.
A company can use a SWOT for overall business strategy sessions or for a specific segment such as marketing, production, or sales. This way, you can see how the overall strategy developed from the SWOT analysis will filter down to the segments below before committing to it. You can also work in reverse with a segment-specific SWOT analysis that feeds into an overall SWOT analysis.
Although a useful planning tool, SWOT has limitations. It is one of several business planning techniques to consider and should not be used alone. Also, each point listed within the categories is not prioritized the same. SWOT does not account for the differences in weight. Therefore, a deeper analysis is needed, using another planning technique.
Business News Daily. " SWOT Analysis: What It Is and When to Use It ."
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Tesla. " Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability ."
SWOT analysis stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This exercise helps teams develop strategic plans for innovation and investment.
A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis is a visual framework used for strategic planning across all types of businesses and organizations. SWOT analyses are made up of four components that will help you determine the output of your team’s analysis.
Opportunities, how do i do a swot analysis.
A SWOT analysis is a qualitative assessment of a company’s SWOT components. Individuals responsible for the assessment fill out a visual template similar to the figure above, which is usually laid out in a two-by-two matrix. This template helps visualize all the SWOT elements together in their entirety.
To understand in more detail the elements of this template, let’s dive into each component individually.
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Your strengths are organizational features that provide a competitive and strategic advantage relative to the market and competition.
Your weaknesses include organizational features that are lacking relative to market competition, or that hinder the organization’s overall effectiveness to compete, grow, and strive for optimal business performance.
These are favorable market conditions or external developments that represent an opportunity for unlocking or improving the organization’s competitive positioning and business performance. Opportunities can be related to present market conditions, but can also be forward-looking.
These are unfavorable market conditions or external developments that pose a risk to the organization’s performance or the entire viability of the current market. Threats can be related to present market conditions, but can also be forward-looking. (e.g. near-term competitive threats or geopolitical risks would be good examples to feature in this bucket)
During the process of filling in this template, you’ll consider all four elements individually. Once you complete the template, through brainstorming sessions and workshops, you can start putting together an actionable plan to capitalize on your strengths and opportunities while countering your weaknesses and threats.
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Let’s take, for example, a smartphone-producing company in the technology industry. Your example SWOT table may include the following.
Strengths :
Weaknesses:
Opportunities:
As a result and potential plan of action, the company in question may decide to focus on mitigating the risks caused by its weaknesses (for example by increasing production in key regions close to the ones suffering bottlenecks in addition to selecting an experienced interim CEO as soon as possible) while seizing market opportunities that may not come about again (i.e. gaining market share in the short term by exploiting the competitor’s bankruptcy).
Overall, resource allocation should flow to:
The results of a SWOT analysis inform your company’s strategic plan and help you make decisions about how to allocate future resources. As a result of a SWOT analysis your team might decide on the following:
The SWOT analysis as a framework for strategic planning has received its fair share of critique and scrutiny. Let’s review some of the pros and cons.
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By Kate Eby | April 26, 2023
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A SWOT analysis helps you identify areas of strengths and weaknesses in your business and take advantage of opportunities and mitigate threats. Leaders perform a SWOT analysis before starting a project or implementing a strategy.
With help from our experts, we’ll teach you about a SWOT analysis , provide examples from three different industries , and highlight common mistakes to avoid. We also include a downloadable SWOT analysis starter kit to help you get started.
To perform a SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats) analysis, assemble a matrix and take an objective look at your business. Write down your observations, summarize your findings, and plan your next steps together with your team.
“A SWOT analysis is designed to shed light on four separate aspects of your business and help in strategy formation and project planning. In order to perform this analysis comprehensively, each factor must be examined in equal measure,” explains Max Wesman , the Founder of GoodHire.
We’ve outlined the steps necessary for completing a SWOT analysis:
Download the SWOT Analysis Starter Kit
We’ve created this starter kit to give you the necessary tools to think through and conduct a SWOT analysis for your business. You’ll find SWOT templates in multiple formats, a checklist of actions to take and questions to ask, and a presentation template. All of these templates are fully customizable and can be adapted for personal decision-making. Download each template individually or as a complete kit.
Included in this download, you’ll find:
A SWOT analysis can help a wide variety of businesses identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. We’ve collected some SWOT analysis examples that demonstrate how they’re used in construction, technology, and retail industries.
Download the Simple Colorful Construction Company SWOT Template for Google Docs Download the Simple Colorful Construction Company SWOT Template for Google Docs with Sample Data
This simple but colorful SWOT template includes example data for a construction company concerned about its growth. In the sample, the company has identified the experience of their staff as a strength, as well as their growth as a business over the last 15 years. They know they need to be more open to adopting new technology, and they acknowledge they have no marketing budget and only attract new clients by word-of-mouth. They use this info to focus their opportunities on leveraging their existing staff to train new teams, and creating a specific budget for marketing. Finally, they have identified the rising costs of labor and the chance of public backlash to a project they are working on as threats to their business.
Download the Blank Animated Technology SWOT Analysis for PowerPoint Download the Animated Technology SWOT Analysis Template for PowerPoint with Sample Data
This animated SWOT analysis template is excellent for showing off your SWOT findings in a meeting or presentation setting. It includes animations to reveal each quadrant of your matrix as you speak. This template includes sample data for a large technology company that has recognized its worldwide presence and growing customer base as strengths, and the requirements of localization and employee retention as weaknesses. The organization is looking ahead to the opportunities presented by decreased labor costs in emerging markets, but also paying attention to the threat of cybersecurity and potential backlash in their home country due to their outsourcing of labor and manufacturing.
Download the Blank Horizontal Retail SWOT Template for Microsoft Word Download the Horizontal Retail SWOT Template for Microsoft Word with Sample Data
This horizontal-oriented SWOT template includes example data for a retail store. In the sample version of the template, the store has outlined its strengths but also noted concerns about the rising costs of rent and the abundance of big-box stores and included those in the threats section. They have identified opportunities as participation in local events and the possibility of a second storefront. The store also recognized that it could improve its social media efforts and the difficulty in competing with larger, online retailers.
A SWOT analysis is a strategic assessment tool that weighs strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to aid in decision-making. A SWOT analysis can help guide you to better-informed conclusions that are more likely to produce long-term benefits.
Invented by Albert Humphrey at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, the SWOT analysis framework has been adopted by businesses and individual decision-makers worldwide. Humphrey’s framework prioritizes the analysis of internal strengths and weaknesses; the related TOWS analysis model flips this on its head and focuses on external opportunities and threats. Another external analysis model, the PEST (political, economic, social, and technological) framework, focuses entirely on external factors, namely political, economical, sociocultural, and technological.
“The SWOT analysis is an excellent framework not only for diagnosing issues in your business, but also for identifying strategic opportunities within it. For example, a SWOT analysis can be applied to the launch of a new product, a business partnership under consideration, or a key hire or promotion. While the SWOT is not meant to be an all-inclusive, fully exhaustive analysis, it does provide a solid basis for discussion, much like a resume or CV contributes to the hiring process,” explains Colleti of Colletti Labs.
The strengths section of a SWOT analysis highlights what you do well. These can include your sales and market presence, hiring and retention practices, and products and services, among others. It can also list what you are good at personally.
Some additional examples of strengths you might list in a SWOT analysis include:
Identifying strengths impartially can be challenging. Use this list of questions to help pinpoint your strengths:
Weaknesses in a SWOT analysis are business aspects that are underperforming. These could be low sales, unpopular services, limitations, negative reviews, or others. Consider your weaknesses carefully, as you can often turn them into opportunities.
Here’s a list of common weaknesses businesses might find in a SWOT analysis:
Business owners often struggle to identify their weaknesses impartially. To help identify weaknesses, ask yourself the following questions, and be honest with your answers:
In a SWOT analysis, opportunities refer to situations that offer a chance to improve or expand. These can be factors such as a gap in the market, new products or services, or positive media coverage.
Some examples of opportunities to note in your SWOT analysis are:
To identify opportunities present in your business, ask the following questions:
Threats in a SWOT analysis refer to events or circumstances that pose a risk to your business’s growth or commercial success. These can include competitors, new regulations, negative media or social media coverage, and customer and employee satisfaction.
Opportunities and threats are sometimes considered two sides of the same coin, as many opportunities invite risk if you do not meet them with a solid plan. Opportunities are chances to capitalize on a possibility, but they can often be safely ignored. On the other hand, if you ignore threats for long enough, they often lead to disastrous consequences. Threats vary by industry and location.
We’ve collected some examples of common threats that could appear in a SWOT analysis:
Identifying threats can feel overwhelming and pessimistic, but they are vital for business planning. Ask yourself the following questions to shine light on potential threats in your SWOT analysis:
In a SWOT analysis, strengths and weaknesses are considered internal factors, and opportunities and threats are considered external factors. Internal factors are usually a result of decisions the company has made. External factors often come from a wider environment.
Internal factors tend to be easier to address since they come from decisions made within the company. External factors depend greatly on factors outside of a business and can be harder to identify and track. As a result, most organizations find it easier to bolster strengths and shore up weaknesses than to take advantage of opportunities and avoid threats.
To write a SWOT analysis for your business, take an objective look at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Keep it organized and concise, and create a specific and actionable list.
We’ve outlined these and other tips:
When performing a SWOT analysis, avoid being vague or too verbose. Be sure to follow up on the findings and create an action plan.
We’ve outlined these and other potential mistakes to avoid in your SWOT analysis:
A SWOT analysis can provide insight into your business’s overall performance, highlight places to improve, and even act as a team-building exercise.
We’ve outlined these and more benefits of performing a SWOT analysis:
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Posted february 2, 2021 by noah parsons.
A SWOT analysis is an incredibly simple, yet powerful tool to help you develop your business strategy, whether you’re building a startup or guiding an existing company.
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Strengths and weaknesses are internal to your company—things that you have some control over and can change. Examples include who is on your team, your patents and intellectual property, and your location.
Opportunities and threats are external—things that are going on outside your company, in the larger market. You can take advantage of opportunities and protect against threats, but you can’t change them. Examples include competitors, prices of raw materials, and customer shopping trends.
A SWOT analysis organizes your top strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats into an organized list and is usually presented in a simple two-by-two grid. Go ahead and download our free SWOT analysis template if you just want to dive right in and get started.
When you take the time to do a SWOT analysis, you’ll be armed with a solid strategy for prioritizing the work that you need to do to grow your business.
You may think that you already know everything that you need to do to succeed, but a SWOT analysis will force you to look at your business in new ways and from new directions. You’ll look at your strengths and weaknesses, and how you can leverage those to take advantage of the opportunities and threats that exist in your market.
For a SWOT analysis to be effective, company founders and leaders need to be deeply involved. This isn’t a task that can be delegated to others.
But, company leadership shouldn’t do the work on their own , either. For best results, you’ll want to gather a group of people who have different perspectives on the company. Select people who can represent different aspects of your company, from sales and customer service to marketing and product development. Everyone should have a seat at the table.
Innovative companies even look outside their own internal ranks when they perform a SWOT analysis and get input from customers to add their unique voice to the mix.
If you’re starting or running a business on your own, you can still do a SWOT analysis. Recruit additional points of view from friends who know a little about your business, your accountant, or even vendors and suppliers. The key is to have different points of view.
Existing businesses can use a SWOT analysis to assess their current situation and determine a strategy to move forward . But, remember that things are constantly changing and you’ll want to reassess your strategy, starting with a new SWOT analysis every six to 12 months.
For startups, a SWOT analysis is part of the business planning process. It’ll help codify a strategy so that you start off on the right foot and know the direction that you plan to go.
As I mentioned above, you want to gather a team of people together to work on a SWOT analysis. You don’t need an all-day retreat to get it done, though. One or two hours should be more than plenty.
Gather people from different parts of your company and make sure that you have representatives from every department and team. You’ll find that different groups within your company will have entirely different perspectives that will be critical to making your SWOT analysis successful.
Doing a SWOT analysis is similar to brainstorming meetings, and there are right and wrong ways to run them. I suggest giving everyone a pad of sticky-notes and have everyone quietly generate ideas on their own to start things off. This prevents groupthink and ensures that all voices are heard.
After five to 10 minutes of private brainstorming, put all the sticky-notes up on the wall and group similar ideas together. Allow anyone to add additional notes at this point if someone else’s idea sparks a new thought.
Once all of the ideas are organized, it’s time to rank the ideas. I like using a voting system where everyone gets five or ten “votes” that they can distribute in any way they like. Sticky dots in different colors are useful for this portion of the exercise.
Based on the voting exercise, you should have a prioritized list of ideas. Of course, the list is now up for discussion and debate, and someone in the room should be able to make the final call on the priority. This is usually the CEO, but it could be delegated to someone else in charge of business strategy.
You’ll want to follow this process of generating ideas for each of the four quadrants of your SWOT analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Here are a few questions that you can ask your team when you’re building your SWOT analysis. These questions can help explain each section and spark creative thinking.
Strengths are internal, positive attributes of your company. These are things that are within your control.
Weaknesses are negative factors that detract from your strengths. These are things that you might need to improve on to be competitive.
Opportunities are external factors in your business environment that are likely to contribute to your success.
Threats are external factors that you have no control over. You may want to consider putting in place contingency plans for dealing with them if they occur.
To help you get a better sense of what at SWOT example actually looks like, we’re going to look at UPer Crust Pies, a specialty meat and fruit pie cafe in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. They sell hot, ready-to-go pies and frozen take-home options, as well as an assortment of fresh salads and beverages.
The company is planning to open its first location in downtown Yubetchatown and is very focused on developing a business model that will make it easy to expand quickly and that opens up the possibility of franchising. Here’s what their SWOT analysis might look like:
With your SWOT analysis complete, you’re ready to convert it into a real strategy. After all, the exercise is about producing a strategy that you can work on during the next few months.
The first step is to look at your strengths and figure out how you can use those strengths to take advantage of your opportunities. Then, look at how your strengths can combat the threats that are in the market. Use this analysis to produce a list of actions that you can take.
With your action list in hand, look at your company calendar and start placing goals (or milestones) on it. What do you want to accomplish in each calendar quarter (or month) moving forward?
You’ll also want to do this by analyzing how external opportunities might help you combat your own, internal weaknesses. Can you also minimize those weaknesses so you can avoid the threats that you identified?
Again, you’ll have an action list that you’ll want to prioritize and schedule.
Back to the UPer Crust Pies example: Based on their SWOT analysis, here are a few potential strategies for growth to help you think through how to translate your SWOT into actionable goals.
With your goals and actions in hand, you’ll be a long way toward completing a strategic plan for your business. I like to use the Lean Planning methodology for strategic plans as well as regular business planning. The actions that you generate from your SWOT analysis will fit right into the milestones portion of your Lean Plan and will give you a concrete foundation that you can grow your business from. You can download our free Lean Plan template to help you get started.
If you have additional ideas for how a SWOT analysis can help your business and how it fits into your regular business planning, I’d love to hear from you. You can find me on Twitter @noahparsons .
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Swot analysis guide: powerful examples and a free template.
Table of Contents
For example, a dip in profit margins for a business can be scrutinized using a SWOT analysis. This tool helps identify internal factors, such as inefficient practices or inflated costs, that might be causing this dip. Using the SWOT pillars – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats – one can derive strategies to rectify the problem and enhance profit margins.
A SWOT analysis serves as a cornerstone for strategic planning, enabling businesses to align their goals with internal capabilities and market realities. Strengths and Weaknesses are introspective elements, helping businesses to capitalize on their unique competencies and address internal shortcomings.
Be sure to watch SmartDraw’s insightful video, ‘What is SWOT? Definition, Examples and How to Do a SWOT Analysis.’ It’s a great addition to our comprehensive SWOT Analysis Guide, reinforcing key concepts and showcasing practical examples. This video enhances your understanding and makes the whole process of performing a SWOT analysis more digestible and engaging.
By understanding the internal and external factors that impact the business, organizations can make informed decisions about allocating resources, pursuing growth opportunities, and minimizing risks.
Cons of swot analysis, breaking down a swot analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats).
Writing a good SWOT analysis is crucial for small businesses looking to expand quickly and maintain a competitive edge over emerging competitors. It serves as a strategic planning tool that enables businesses to assess their internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities and threats.
This could include external environment factors such as pricing, competition, lowered demand, and more. It can also include internal weaknesses that negatively affect the business, such as a lack of budget, small teams, etc.
The threats part of SWOT analyses can also scare off many. Essentially, the goal here is to look at potential threats that could negatively impact your business. Again, this can include internal issues and external threats that you identify.
By methodically examining these elements, a business can develop strategies that leverage their strong points, improve weaknesses, reinforce opportunities, and guard against external threats.
Internal factors.
It is essential to understand your strengths and weaknesses in these areas to make strategic decisions and strengthen your competitive position.
It enables you to make informed financial decisions, such as allocating funds for research and development, marketing campaigns, or infrastructure improvements.
External factors can present opportunities or threats to your business. For example, a growing market or favorable economic conditions can create opportunities for expansion and increased demand for your products or services.
Home Depot identified several noteworthy strengths, including high-quality customer service, strong brand recognition, and positive supplier relationships. Conversely, its weaknesses were identified as a constrained supply chain, reliance on the U.S. market, and a business model that could be easily replicated.
The following table breaks down the SWOT analysis that follows into simple steps, making it easy to understand and follow. It serves as a concise, clear guide, making the process less overwhelming and more manageable.
Steps for SWOT Analysis | Description |
---|---|
Step 1: Gather Data | Gather internal and external data about your company or yourself. This data, which includes financial statements, customer feedback, and industry trends, will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and potential opportunities and threats. |
Step 2: Brainstorm | Brainstorm around the data, breaking it down into categories of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Be open to all ideas and make an exhaustive list as a foundation for further exploration. |
Step 3: Analyze Strengths | Objectively analyze the strengths, asking questions about your main advantages, resources, and unique features. The goal is to gain insight into what makes you or your business successful. |
Step 4: Analyze Weaknesses | After analyzing strengths, move on to weaknesses. Identify areas that could be improved and aspects that require more information for better decision-making. |
Step 5: Identify Opportunities | Look towards external factors to find potential opportunities for change and growth. Keep up with current events and developments to open your mind to alternative options. |
Step 6: Analyze Threats | Identify possible external threats such as competition and disruptions. Regular monitoring of outside forces is essential to make informed decisions quickly when needed. |
Step 7: Construct an Action Plan + Implement Solutions | Using insights from the above steps, construct an action plan with set goals, responsibilities, and timelines. Implement the solutions within your organization to meet your targets efficiently. |
Financial statements, employee feedback.
Employee feedback is an essential resource for any company looking to conduct an effective SWOT Analysis. This data can provide insight into the issues facing your business, as well as potential solutions that could be beneficial for the company.
As an illustration, let’s consider a hedge fund that has devised an exclusive trading strategy generating exceptional returns that outperform the market. The fund now faces the task of determining the most effective approach to utilize these outcomes in order to appeal to prospective investors and expand its investor base.
The next step is analyzing the strength category by asking questions such as what are your main advantages, what resources do you have access to, or what makes your company stand out in the market. Looking at these inquiries objectively will allow you to gain insight into what makes you or your company successful.
Step 4: analyze weaknesses.
Where can decisions be better informed? Allowing yourself and your team time to think about areas that need attention ensures that possible solutions can be discussed further down the line.
Decision-making, step 5: identify opportunities.
In order to find potential opportunities for change and growth look toward external factors such as what new technologies are emerging, what regulations are changing, and whether there are gaps in current products or services providing space for improvement. Keeping up with current events opens your mind up to alternative options.
Step 7: construct an action plan + implement solutions, swot analysis template.
Now that we’ve gone through some examples in different industries, how do you get started on creating a SWOT analysis of your own? Luckily, this kind of analysis is pretty easy to structure. You can create one using your computer or even just divide a piece of paper into four quadrants and start writing.
When trying to come up with a SWOT analysis for your own business, it’s sometimes easier to see what others in your industry are doing. Before conducting a SWOT analysis for your company, you can look at some examples below to get some inspiration.
Marketing swot analysis, 3. company swot analysis example, swot analysis example for a restaurant.
Food service businesses tend to have their own unique challenges, so identifying potential strategies is often difficult. However, using a Restaurant SWOT analysis example, you can build off it and create a SWOT analysis for your business that’s reflective of the market.
Swot analysis tips.
A strong SWOT analysis is about diving deep into your business and collating all the information in an organized way. The more you’re able to tap into what makes your business unique and what needs to improve, the more actionable your SWOT analysis will be.
Ask for feedback, be systematic.
Sometimes, the easiest way to fill out a SWOT analysis is to have a system. That can mean going through internal issues across each quadrant first and then moving to external factors. Or you can choose to do two quadrants at a time, such as strengths and opportunities if that is easier.
Learn business abbreviations and acronyms, the takeaways.
By conducting a thorough SWOT analysis, businesses can gain valuable insights into their current position and make informed decisions to drive success and growth.
Know the strengths and weaknesses of your organization, internally and externally.
Historically, corporate planning has always been difficult. Many organizations have failed at trying to get everyone on the same page and agree to the details of a plan—more often than not, their efforts proved to be both ineffective and time consuming. Something had to be done.
Albert Humphrey of the Stanford Research Institute determined in the 1960s to identify why corporate planning consistently failed. Thus the origination of the SWOT analysis. Today, the SWOT analysis is one of the most important concepts in the business world and is widely used by all types of organizations to help build a strategic plan.
So, what is a SWOT analysis, how do you create one, and what do you do with it? In this article, we’ll explain it all (and share some SWOT analysis examples to boot) from start to finish.
ClearPoint Strategy is here to help you navigate this essential process with ease. Our software provides the tools and framework necessary to execute a successful SWOT analysis, ensuring your strategic plan is robust and actionable.
What is a swot analysis.
A SWOT analysis is a high-level strategic planning model that helps organizations identify where they’re doing well and where they can improve, both from an internal and an external perspective. SWOT is an acronym for “Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.”
SWOT works because it helps you evaluate your business by considering multiple factors:
Organizations use SWOT to plot out a future course that plays on their strengths and minimizes risks. Taking the time to look at your organization from different perspectives and honestly assess your future prospects is a worthwhile activity; the insights you glean as a result you should then use constructively as part of the strategic planning process.
How to do a swot analysis.
To help you get started, we’ve created this step-by-step SWOT analysis template. The examples below are specific to the airline industry (since that’s the example we use in our grid), but the SWOT analysis exercise is applicable to all businesses.
You’ll notice we divided our hypothetical examples for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats based on the four Balanced Scorecard perspectives. You don’t have to use the Balanced Scorecard to be successful with your SWOT analysis, but this method does provide a strong framework for your discussion.
Not using the Balanced Scorecard? Look to the guiding principles of whatever strategic management framework you are using for ways to think about your business. For example, the VRIO framework emphasizes value, rarity, imitability, and organization; you can conduct a SWOT analysis through the lens of these criteria instead.
Undertaking a SWOT analysis requires planning and organization; it can also be a lengthy process. For those reasons, we recommend treating it like a project. If you already have project management (PM) software, by all means use it.
If you don’t have software (or if you’re considering making a change), we encourage you to take a look at ClearPoint. It’s ideal for keeping individual projects on track, but it also does much more than that— it shows you how important projects impact your organization’s overall strategy. Are your projects moving the needle when it comes to your larger goals? That’s an important aspect of project management you can’t get with any other PM tool.
Viewing your SWOT analysis as a project within ClearPoint has multiple benefits:
Another benefit of treating your SWOT analysis as a project in ClearPoint: You won’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you repeat the process. You can just duplicate the framework, make any necessary adjustments, and then repeat the process as before, even comparing your newest SWOT to the previous analysis if necessary.
Below is a screenshot of what it might look like to set up a SWOT analysis as a project within ClearPoint, with some sample milestones shown.
Now, let’s dig into the steps of the analysis process.
This is the grid-like matrix that will house the information you gather. As you can see in the SWOT analysis template below, each quadrant features one of the four elements you’ll be focusing on—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Using a matrix helps present your findings in a clear, easy-to-understand way.
2. gather the right participants.
Pull people from all departments to participate in the analysis. Your entire leadership team should be involved because they can provide a broad view of the organization and offer insight into the competitive landscape.
But having lots of different perspectives is beneficial, and that means including leaders from every department—and anyone else you think might have valuable input. The more diverse the group, the better insights you’ll generate.
Not all ideas will make it to the final list, but it’s important to consider them all.
Ask the group: What are we good at? How are we better than our competitors? These are broad questions, but in the beginning stages of your discussion, you should accept all answers.
Examine these questions in relation to the Balanced Scorecard perspectives. For the fictional company Upward Airlines, the discussion might look like this:
Having considered these questions for your own organization, you might come up with multiple responses in some categories. Below is a sample of the strengths portion of the SWOT analysis for Upward Airlines:
TIP: As mentioned above, you can use ClearPoint to simplify this and the remaining information-gathering steps. Rather than asking everyone to brainstorm simultaneously in a conference room, give people time to review relevant data (also housed in ClearPoint) that would help identify strengths and weaknesses, as well as potential opportunities. Participants can then input their thoughts into ClearPoint, link to key supporting metrics, and even add contextual information surrounding their thought process.
Doing your analysis within a single tool not only makes it easier to collect the information but also gives you the visibility to see how the various components that make up your SWOT might be linked. Further, ClearPoint has a discussion feature that allows users to @ mention other users, and thus facilitates conversations about your strengths and weaknesses.
4. list your weaknesses.
Ask the group: What are we not good at? Where can we grow? What are we lacking? The Upward Airlines discussion might look like this:
Ask the group: Where do we see big (and small) possibilities for our organization? What do we see happening in the future?
The Upward Airlines group might discuss the following:
Upward Airlines’ opportunities for the foreseeable future might be:
Ask the group: What do we see as a threat? What obstacles do we anticipate? What is changing that could hurt us? As a travel-related company in a tough economy, Upward Airlines might uncover a number of potential threats:
The external threats deemed most imminent for Upward Airlines might be:
In looking at your SWOT matrix, do some of your strengths naturally support the identified opportunities? If you eliminate weaknesses, would that present additional opportunities?
At this point, we recommend running a “brown paper exercise”—print your SWOT matrix in large size, and ask employees to add post-it notes in any or all of the matrix’s four boxes if they feel the leadership team missed something. (You can also ask employees to add their names next to their suggestions so leadership can follow up with them.) Not only is this exercise great for inter-office discussion, but it also gives leaders the chance to consider opinions from staff in the field.
Done correctly, the SWOT analysis is another valuable tool in your toolbox for improving business performance and minimizing threats and weaknesses going forward. It can also prompt organizations to be more innovative with their strategy—new ideas may emerge that leadership would not normally have considered without such a thorough examination of the business from all angles.
A SWOT analysis is a way of understanding and evaluating all facets of your company so you’re in a better position to make decisions about the future. But there are also external factors that will impact your company’s future; these things are beyond your control but still require consideration as you map out your strategy.
That’s why many organizations choose to complement a SWOT analysis with a PEST analysis—together, they provide a complete picture of your business environment for effective strategic planning.
PEST stands for political, economic, social, and technological—the four key areas outside your business that are likely to impact it. These factors tend to play out over long time frames. An economic slowdown, for instance, could take years to resolve, but you can take action to address staff training issues fairly quickly.
Thus, a PEST analysis is more valuable than SWOT when it comes to formulating longer-term plans and business strategies.
Our recommendation is to do a SWOT analysis first, followed by a PEST analysis, to get a complete picture of the business landscape.
Congratulations! Hopefully, you understand your business a little better after completing your SWOT analysis; now it’s time to put those insights to good use. Your ideas on how to use your strengths and overcome your weaknesses should inform your strategy.
Developing a strategy is in and of itself a big step. It involves defining objectives for your company to move toward, creating priority initiatives (projects) to help make them a reality, and identifying measures to make sure the strategy is unfolding the way it should.
Our Upward Airlines SWOT analysis example, for instance, lists four weaknesses:
Some of these weaknesses are easier to address than others, such as improving employee satisfaction and your project management practices. Others, like the lack of direct travel routes, may be difficult to address in a time when airlines are still recovering from the COVID-19 fallout and profits are low. Similarly, you want to continue supporting your current strengths.
While you shouldn’t let your excellent training program lapse, it needn’t be a focus if you expect the number of new hires over the next year to be low. However, improving your virtual communication practices will most likely prove to be beneficial moving forward.
Therefore, the Upward Airlines SWOT analysis above might drive strategy in the following ways:
Make sure there is a clear and strong link between your SWOT analysis and your strategy map. For example, if you’re a for-profit organization, your financial perspective will be the top priority—build your analysis into your map in a manner that drives those finances in the right direction.
Maybe your SWOT analysis foretold an opportunity to hit a new line of business or forecast that a line of business would dry up. Your strategy needs to reflect that information.
If you’re using ClearPoint for strategy execution, you can make sure the projects you initiate as a result of your SWOT will actually have an impact by a) creating links within the software to show clear connections between projects and objectives, and b) tracking progress on your goals and initiatives over time.
That way, you’ll be able to see if, for example, your revised capacity plan positively impacted revenue in any substantial way—or if it had a negative effect on the bottom line. If you’re continuously monitoring progress, you’ll be able to adjust your course of action in a timely manner if needed.
Those insights will also be useful for your next SWOT analysis.
Still uncertain as to how your team can use the information produced by a SWOT analysis? We reached out to the business community to ask about their experiences with SWOT.
Their answers, listed below, show that SWOT can be applied to any number of business activities, from developing a long-term overall strategy to launching campaigns, new products, and more.
"We focus on the opportunity aspect of SWOT. We are always looking to find new ways of growing our company, and we use this analysis to show us areas where our business might thrive. A SWOT analysis showed us how important it would be for us to partner with over 15 different insurance companies, so that we can freely match each client with whichever one is best for them. Most companies like ours only work with one or two companies, but we have seized the opportunity, and we are growing because of it."
—Anthony Martin of Choice Mutual
"We took action to understand that it's not enough to simply have a great product; we need to make sure our customers know how it can help them. By servicing the market, we found ways to add value for our customers and build relationships with them by providing helpful resources on our website and offering free trials. This has helped us to focus on creating and providing value to our customers, rather than just trying to get them to buy our product. As a result, we've created a much more sustainable and successful business."
—Diana Stepanova of Monitask
"One of the most important things that came out of our SWOT analysis was identifying untapped opportunities. After changing the game with our magnetic lashes, we saw a gap in the acrylic nail market. Through a SWOT analysis, we have realized our strength in reimagining highly used beauty products and making them better for the consumer. That has opened up even more opportunities to revolutionize the billion-dollar beauty industry."
—Ann McFerran of Glamnetic
"Our SWOT analysis revealed that we could create additional revenue streams by white-labeling our writing service and marketing it to other agencies. We offered interested parties discounts on our already-competitive rates, which made working with us very attractive and profitable for both sides. This allowed us to effectively double the size of our market. Most of the work we do now is for our agency partners, which means we can spend less time chasing sales and instead focus on ensuring quality in our service."
—Milo Cruz of Freelance Writing Jobs
“The best insight I gained from performing a SWOT analysis of my organization is that we are very good at what we do and have a lot of growth potential. One action that we took because of this insight was to expand our product line. We now offer various [photo] backdrops, including some specifically designed for events. We have also started marketing to new customers, which has helped us grow our business.At first, we didn't think that expanding our product line would help us much, but it has been one of the best things we've done for our business. It's enabled us to attract new customers and grow our sales. Marketing to new customers has also been helpful in terms of growing our business. These actions have made us a more prosperous and well-rounded company. "
—Kate Zhang of Kate Backdrop
"The SWOT analysis helped us identify potential opportunities that were unique to us in terms of reach. This allowed us to focus on key areas and strategies that would allow us to be the go-to choice of a specific market."Knowing where your company stands in relation to its competitors is crucial for developing strategies that will give you a competitive advantage. It also gives you insight into your unique opportunities that your competitors may not have. This is the kind of information that can help you make decisions that will take your company to the next level."
—Linda Shaffer of Checkr
"There are many roofing contractors competing for business, and it can be difficult for customers to understand what sets us apart from the rest. In order to address this issue, we have revamped our marketing materials to better communicate our unique selling points.As a result, potential customers can now see that our company is the best choice for quality roofing services, and we have experienced a significant increase in sales."
—Marty Ford of BulletpRoof Roof Systems Ltd.
“Owners of startups and small businesses need, but cannot find, a system to start, market, operate, or finance a business. Through our SWOT analysis, we noticed that our competitors left important questions and needs unanswered. For example, a competitor might help you set up a corporation, but have nothing for you after that.You started the business, but now need marketing, operational, or finance help. We strive to be the entrepreneur's best friend by giving you the needed tools."
—James Chittenden of One Click Advisor
"SWOT analysis was incredibly helpful when it came to understanding the strengths of my business. I was then able to play to those strengths and build on them.One strength was integrity—my business is always honest—and I’ve built that honesty into our brand."
—Keith Terrell of Backpacks Global
"Overcoming our weaknesses doesn't mean we are not keeping an eye on our existing strengths. If there's one thing SWOT analysis has taught us, it’s that we should treasure the things that keep our company strong by being innovative. Our positive attributes can become a weakness if we refuse to adapt to changes. Consistently monitoring our strengths has allowed us to hit all our targets and go beyond our goals. As a result, we have outperformed our competitors by always bringing something new to the table."
—Adam Garcia of The Stock Dork
"Two of the issues we identified were the great resignation and the recession. Knowing them in advance gave us plenty of time to make the necessary changes (like retaining your best employees by offering new benefits—remote work, PTO, and unlimited growth opportunities). We also changed our inventory strategy and made sure we had enough to counter the price increases, shortages, and demand.These strategy changes helped us limit the adverse effects of the recession, optimize our stocks, and make sure all our orders were fulfilled on time. The changes were also able to help us retain our best employees; thus, we never even had any problems throughout the great resignation."
—Michael Perry of Fitness Fixed Gear
"In our SWOT analysis, we were able to pinpoint areas where our employees may be lacking the skills they needed to succeed in our company. We decided to offer free online learning to our workers to help them add to their skill set.This has helped us not only improve the skill sets of our employees, but it has also increased employee retention. Employees want to stay loyal to a company that helps them grow."
—Mark Daoust of Quiet Light
"Prior to the SWOT analysis, I had always approached marketing from a product-centric perspective; however, the SWOT analysis made me realize that we needed to focus more on customer-centric marketing. We needed to connect with our target audience and build relationships with them.As a result, we've made some changes to our marketing approach, and I believe that these changes will help us to be more successful in the long run."
—Jacob Villa of Authority
"We have always prided ourselves on having good client relationships, but this exercise showed us that we needed to have strong client relationships. We have studied our weakness (why we have monthly policy cancellations or non-renewals) and the results showed that we need to focus on building and maintaining client relationships. After doing that, we have seen a significant increase in the average tenure of our clients and customer satisfaction scores."
—Loran Marmes of Medicare Solutions Team
"One threat we encountered in our business was the sudden and huge dip in our customer satisfaction score, which has never happened in the past five years. To resolve this issue and ensure we eliminate the threat that's harming our relationship with customers, we allocated time to engage with our employees and immediately gave them intensive customer service training.Our urgent action to eradicate this threat has helped our business bounce back and we’ve regained the trust of our customers. It has also taught us to listen to customer feedback seriously and do our best to live up to their expectations."
—Jake Smith of Absolute Reg LTD
"A successful SWOT analysis encourages discussion from employees of different levels, from operational, to managerial, to administrative level. By doing this, everyone contributes their thoughts on the status and standing of the company—it’s not just about how one person sees it. This way, all aspects of the business are considered and addressed from all levels."
—Corey Morgan of Kind Home Painting
To create the most accurate and effective SWOT analysis, we recommend the following best practices:
If you need some guidance with this process, download our free strategic planning booklet. It includes eight of the most popular templates to build strategic plans, including a SWOT analysis template.
The strategic plan you develop from your SWOT analysis is powerful, so once you’ve created it, don’t let it sit! Use strategy execution software like ClearPoint to track your progress over time.
Read more about strategy execution and how you can use ClearPoint for tracking here.
Ready to take action? tart planning for the future now!
Ready to streamline your SWOT analysis and take your strategic planning to the next level? ClearPoint Strategy is here to guide you. Our comprehensive software solution simplifies the SWOT analysis process, ensuring you gain valuable insights and effectively integrate them into your strategic plan.
Book a personalized demo with our experts and see how our software can help you efficiently conduct SWOT analyses, track progress, and achieve your strategic goals.
What are the 4 dimensions of swot analysis.
The four dimensions areL strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
You need a few uninterrupted hours to conduct a strong SWOT analysis. You should conduct a SWOT analysis around the same time of your strategy refresh. Include key leaders within the company to get comprehensive insights on the current state of your business.
Use your SWOT analysis to influence your strategic plan! Don't let the insights from your SWOT analysis just sit in a shelf. Learn how to utilize your strengths to achieve your long-term goals, and make plans to strengthen your weaknesses.
A SWOT analysis offers many benefits for your organization. It allows you to better understand your business. By taking the time to identify where your company succeeds, and where they struggle, you can create plans to leverage your strengths and mitigate risks in your weaknesses.
A SWOT analysis is conducted to assess internal factors that affect your business. A PESTEL analysis focuses solely on external factors .
The benefits of using SWOT analysis include:
- Identifying Strengths: Helps identify and leverage the organization's internal strengths. - Recognizing Weaknesses: Highlights areas for improvement within the organization. - Spotting Opportunities: Uncovers external opportunities that the organization can exploit for growth. - Understanding Threats: Identifies external threats that could impact the organization’s success. - Strategic Planning: Provides a foundation for developing strategic plans and making informed decisions.
SWOT analysis can help your business by:
- Strategic Decision Making: Informs strategic decisions by providing a comprehensive view of the internal and external factors affecting the business. - Resource Allocation: Helps prioritize resource allocation based on identified strengths and opportunities. - Risk Management: Enables proactive management of potential threats and weaknesses. - Competitive Advantage: Identifies unique strengths that can be leveraged to gain a competitive edge. - Goal Setting: Aids in setting realistic goals and objectives based on a clear understanding of the business environment.
Common mistakes to avoid when conducting a SWOT analysis include:
- Lack of Specificity: Being too vague or general in identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. - Ignoring External Factors: Focusing too much on internal factors and neglecting external influences. - Overlooking Data: Not using data and evidence to support the analysis, leading to biased or incomplete results. - Failure to Act: Conducting the analysis but not using the insights to inform strategic decisions and actions. - Infrequent Reviews: Not updating the SWOT analysis regularly to reflect changes in the internal and external environment.
You should conduct a SWOT analysis:
- Annually: At least once a year as part of the strategic planning process. - During Major Changes: Whenever there are significant changes in the market, industry, or within the organization. - Before Strategic Initiatives: Prior to launching new products, entering new markets, or making major business decisions. - Periodically: Regularly reviewing and updating the SWOT analysis ensures it remains relevant and accurate.
Tips for getting the most out of a SWOT analysis include:
- Involve Key Stakeholders: Engage a diverse group of stakeholders to gain comprehensive insights and perspectives. - Use Data: Base the analysis on accurate and up-to-date data to ensure reliability. - Be Specific: Clearly define each strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat to avoid ambiguity. - Prioritize Factors: Focus on the most critical factors that will have the greatest impact on the business. - Develop Action Plans: Translate insights from the SWOT analysis into actionable strategies and plans. - Review Regularly: Regularly revisit and update the SWOT analysis to keep it relevant and useful.
Ted is a Founder and Managing Partner of ClearPoint Strategy and leads the sales and marketing teams.
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A SWOT analysis can help a small business owner or business assess a company’s position to determine the most optimal strategy going forward. This business practice can help you identify what you’re doing well, what you want to do better, and what kinds of obstacles you might encounter along the way.
This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about a SWOT analysis: what it is, how it works, and how to do it. We’ll also include an example and a template to help guide you as you perform your own SWOT analysis.
A SWOT analysis is a strategic planning technique that outlines an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Assessing business competition in this way can help an organization plan strategically and execute more effectively.
Your business’s strengths SWOT section should include anything that your business does differently or better than competitors. Think about your unique value proposition, trends you’ve noticed in positive customer feedback, operational strengths, and company culture. This section is the perfect place to name and celebrate anything you’re already doing well.
Don’t be afraid to toot your own horn (while also remaining objective). Clearly identifying your business’s strengths not only helps you keep your spirits balanced as you address your weaknesses, it will also give you a sense of where to concentrate your resources. It’s easier to build a successful business when you’re working towards something, rather than acting in opposition.
Questions to help you determine your strengths:
Your weaknesses are the areas in which the business has room for improvement. You should include structural weaknesses in this section—those that relate to your systems, procedures, resources, and personnel. This is a great place to look at common feedback from employees (either from exit interviews, anonymous surveys, or other sources) and recurring customer complaints.
Questions to help you determine your weaknesses:
Your opportunities are the positive, external factors that your business might benefit from… but cannot directly control. That might include market opportunities, consumer purchasing trends, legal or regulatory changes, population changes, the cost of raw materials, and more. For example, businesses that provide accessibility for aging seniors might recognize the forthcoming “silver tsunami” of Baby Boomers entering the target demographic. This would be a clear opportunity to expand their customer base.
Questions to help you determine your opportunities:
Your threats are the external factors that have the potential to negatively affect your business. A threat can be specific and competitor-based or more structural. buy clomid online buy clomid online no prescription Examples of structural threats could be supply chain challenges, shifts in market requirements, talent shortages, or changes to social media algorithms (especially if your business heavily relies on social media marketing). You might also face a threat (or threats) from your competitors. This can include the way they operate, how they’re marketing, or the products they offer.
Identifying every external threat your business faces is essential for your business to identify how it must adapt in order to meet and overcome these challenges.
Questions to help you determine threats:
SWOT analyses offer a variety of benefits for businesses and personal brands. Here are some of the most common benefits of a SWOT analysis:
You can approach SWOT analyses in multiple ways. You can conduct a personal SWOT analysis for yourself as an individual, you can perform a marketing SWOT analysis to determine a competitive advantage in your marketing , or you can use a SWOT analysis as a part of broader strategic planning.
Whatever your end goal for a SWOT analysis, follow these steps.
Use a SWOT template or create your own. You can create your SWOT framework on the computer or on a whiteboard—if you choose to do the latter, be sure that someone is in charge of recording the responses so that you don’t lose key insights (you can also take a picture at the end of the SWOT session).
A SWOT analysis is most effective when it collects a variety of perspectives. Gathering key stakeholders with various perspectives will help you see more than you would have seen alone. Marketing leaders might be able to give you a more specific sense of the opportunities and threats related to your content marketing efforts. Your people team is closest to all personnel changes and feedback, so they’ll have the clearest sense of an organization’s strengths and what is driving employee retention (or challenging it). Sales leaders can help translate opportunities into a cohesive business strategy.
It’s simple: when it comes to a SWOT analysis, more heads are better than one.
Go through each field of the SWOT diagram, spending some time with each one. Ask the group the guiding questions to ensure you’re developing a comprehensive picture of the internal and external environment. There are no bad ideas in brainstorming. You’re just trying to get thoughts flowing. Something that feels like a “bad idea” might lead to discovering a potential threat you’d never thought of before or nuanced analysis of how you stack up to your nearest competitor. The key here is to keep the brainstorm going.
As you brainstorm, record points and ideas when they are relevant. At the end of the session, your SWOT analysis should leave you with a clear sense of the organization’s strengths and company’s weaknesses that you can use to guide your strategy formulation.
Revisit the SWOT diagram at a later time and edit it, culling out anything you don’t really need. You can also polish up some of the key insights gleaned in the brainstorming session. This is especially important if you plan to use your SWOT analysis as a more formal document that might be disseminated broadly.
The final step, if you choose to do it, is to take your SWOT takeaways and put them together in a polished document that you can share.
It can be easier to understand how to approach a SWOT analysis if you’ve seen a SWOT analysis example. For the sake of this example, we will imagine a hypothetical company and what its SWOT analysis might look like.
An Instagram-friendly fitness business offering virtual workouts.
Use this template to create your own SWOT analysis.
Weaknesses section: what your company could improve, opportunities section: external factors you could use to your advantage, threats section: external factors that could harm your business, owning the hard truths of a swot analysis.
A SWOT analysis can bring up a lot of hard truths. It’s difficult to confront your company’s weaknesses and sometimes looking at threats can make them feel like the existential kind. Overcome these obstacles and give yourself the fortitude to confront business challenges head on with the Mental Toughness mini-course. The best part? It’s free.
Mary Kate Miller writes about small business, real estate, and finance. In addition to writing for Foundr, her work has been published by The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Bustle, and more. She lives in Chicago.
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Use a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis to grow your business.
A SWOT analysis is a planning process that helps your company overcome challenges and determine which new leads to pursue. “SWOT” stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. You should perform a SWOT analysis before you commit to any sort of company action, whether you are exploring new initiatives, revamping internal policies, considering opportunities to pivot or altering a plan midway through its execution.
While there are numerous ways to assess your company, one of the most effective is to conduct a SWOT analysis. Learn all about this approach below.
The primary objective of a SWOT analysis is to help organizations develop a full awareness of all the factors involved in making a business decision . Albert Humphrey of the Stanford Research Institute created this method in the 1960s during a study conducted to identify why corporate planning consistently failed. Since its creation, the SWOT analysis has become one of the most useful tools for business owners to start and grow their companies.
“It is impossible to accurately map out a small business’s future without first evaluating it from all angles, which includes an exhaustive look at all internal and external resources and threats,” Bonnie Taylor, chief marketing officer at CCS Innovations, told Business News Daily. “A SWOT accomplishes this in four straightforward steps that even rookie business owners can understand and embrace.”
Employ a SWOT analysis before you commit to any company action, whether that’s exploring new initiatives, revamping internal policies, considering opportunities to pivot or altering a plan midway through its execution. Sometimes it’s wise to perform a general SWOT analysis to check on the current landscape of your business and improve operations as needed. The analysis can show you key areas where your organization is performing optimally and areas where operations need adjustment.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking about your business operations informally, in hopes that they will all come together on their own. If you take the time to put together a formal SWOT analysis, you’ll be able to see the whole picture of your business. From there, you can discover ways to improve or eliminate your company’s weaknesses and capitalize on its strengths.
While the business owner should certainly be involved in creating a SWOT analysis, it is often helpful to include other team members in the process. Ask for input from a variety of team members and openly discuss any contributions made. The collective knowledge of the team will allow you to adequately analyze your business from all sides.
You can also conduct a personal SWOT analysis in your own life, whether for professional or other purposes.
A SWOT analysis focuses on the four elements of the acronym, allowing companies to identify the forces influencing a strategy, action or initiative. Knowing these positive and negative elements can help companies more effectively communicate what parts of a plan need to be recognized.
When drafting a SWOT analysis, individuals typically create a table split into four columns to list each impacting element side by side for comparison. Strengths and weaknesses won’t typically match listed opportunities and threats verbatim, although they should correlate, since they are tied together.
Billy Bauer, owner of ROYCE New York, noted that pairing external threats with internal weaknesses can highlight the most serious issues a company faces.
“Once you’ve identified your risks, you can then decide whether it is most appropriate to eliminate the internal weakness by assigning company resources to fix the problems, or to reduce the external threat by abandoning the threatened area of business and meeting it after strengthening your business,” said Bauer.
Strengths (S) and weaknesses (W) refer to internal factors, which are the resources and experience readily available to you.
These are some common internal factors:
External forces influence and affect every company, organization and individual. Whether these factors are connected directly or indirectly to opportunities (O) or threats (T), it is important to note and document each one.
External factors are typically things you or your company do not control, such as the following:
After you create your SWOT framework and fill out your SWOT analysis, you will need to come up with some recommendations and strategies based on the results. Linda Pophal, strategic marketing communication consultant and content marketer at Strategic Communications, said these strategies should focus on leveraging strengths and opportunities to overcome weaknesses and threats.
“This is actually the area of strategy development where organizations have an opportunity to be most creative and where innovative ideas can emerge, but only if the analysis has been appropriately prepared in the first place,” said Pophal.
Bryan Weaver, an in-house advisor to Scholefield Construction Attorneys, was heavily involved in creating a SWOT analysis for his firm. He provided Business News Daily with a sample SWOT analysis template and example that was used in the firm’s decision to expand its practice to include dispute mediation services. His SWOT matrix included the following:
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Construction law firm with staff members who are trained in both law and professional engineering/general contracting. Their experience gives a unique advantage. Small (three employees) — can change and adapt quickly. | No one has been a mediator before or been through any formal mediation training programs. One staff member has been a part of mediations, but not as a neutral party. |
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Most commercial construction contracts require mediation. Despite hundreds of mediators in the marketplace, only a few have actual construction experience. For smaller disputes, mediators don’t work as a team, only as individuals; Scholefield staff can offer anyone the advantage of a group of neutrals to evaluate a dispute. | Anyone can become a mediator, so other construction law firms could open up their own mediation service as well. Most potential clients have a negative impression of mediation, because they feel mediators don’t understand or care to understand the problem, and rush to resolve it. |
Resulting strategy: Take mediation courses to eliminate weaknesses and launch Scholefield Mediation, which uses name recognition with the law firm, and highlights that the firm’s construction and construction law experience makes it different.
“Our SWOT analysis forced us to methodically and objectively look at what we had to work with and what the marketplace was offering,” Weaver said. “We then crafted our business plan to emphasize the advantages of our strongest features while exploiting opportunities based on marketplace weaknesses.”
The SWOT analysis is a simple but comprehensive strategy for identifying not only the weaknesses and threats of an action plan, but also the strengths and opportunities it makes possible. However, a SWOT analysis is just one tool in your business strategy. Additional analytic tools to consider include the PEST analysis (political, economic, social and technological), MOST analysis (mission, objective, strategies and tactics) and SCRS analysis (strategy, current state, requirements and solution).
Consistent business analysis and strategic planning is the best way to keep track of growth, strengths and weaknesses. Use a series of analysis strategies, like SWOT, in your decision-making process to examine and execute strategies in a more balanced, in-depth way.
Max Freedman and Nicole Fallon contributed to this article. Some source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.
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How to conduct a swot analysis, what is a swot analysis used for, additional resources, swot analysis.
A framework to understand and analyze a company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
SWOT stands for S trengths, W eaknesses, O pportunities, and T hreats. A SWOT analysis is a framework to help assess and understand the internal and external forces that may create opportunities or risks for an organization.
Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors. They are characteristics of a business that give it a relative advantage (or disadvantage, respectively) over its competition.
Opportunities and threats, on the other hand, are external factors. Opportunities are elements of the external environment that management can seize upon to improve business performance (like revenue growth or improved margins).
Threats are elements of the external environment that may endanger a firm’s competitive advantage (s), or even its ability to operate as a going concern (think regulatory issues or technological disruption).
Strengths may be any number of areas or characteristics where a company excels and has a competitive advantage over its peers. Advantages may be more qualitative in nature and therefore difficult to measure (like a great corporate culture, strong brand recognition, proprietary technology, etc.), or they may be more quantitative (like best-in-class margins, above-average inventory turnover, category-leading return on equity, etc.).
Weaknesses are areas or characteristics where a business is at a competitive disadvantage relative to its peers. Like strengths, these can also be more qualitative or quantitative. Examples include inexperienced management, high employee turnover, low (or declining) margins, and high (or excessive) use of debt as a funding source.
The “Opportunities” section should highlight external factors that represent potential growth or improvement areas for a business. Consider opportunities like a growing total addressable market (TAM) , technological advancements that might help improve efficiency, or changes in social norms that are creating new markets or new sub-segments of existing markets.
Threats are external forces that represent risks to a business and its ability to operate. The categories tend to be similar to the “Opportunities” section, but directionally opposite. Consider examples like an industry in decline (which is the same as a decreasing TAM), technological innovation that could disrupt the existing business and its operations, or evolving social norms that make existing product offerings less attractive to a growing number of consumers.
A SWOT analysis is rarely completed in isolation; it generally makes up one part of a broader business analysis. And while it is itself an assessment framework, a SWOT analysis is also an effective tool to help summarize other findings.
For example, an analyst can’t really assess a company’s strengths and weaknesses without first understanding the business and its industry. They may wish to leverage other tools and frameworks in order to accomplish this, including:
The same is true for external factors – opportunities and threats. It’s nearly impossible to understand these without first considering:
A SWOT analysis is used differently by different stakeholders.
For example, a management team will use the framework to support strategic planning and risk management. SWOT helps them visualize the firm’s relative advantages and disadvantages in order to better understand where and how the organization should allocate resources, either towards growth or risk reduction initiatives.
The analyst community, on the other hand, may seek to understand (and quantify) strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in order to assess the business more completely.
Consider that findings from a SWOT analysis may help inform model assumptions among analysts. It could be an equity researcher trying to estimate the fair market value of a company’s shares , or a credit analyst looking to better understand a borrower’s creditworthiness.
In general, the SWOT framework is considered by many to be one of the most useful tools available for strategic planning and business analysis.
Thank you for reading CFI’s guide to SWOT Analysis. To keep learning and advancing your career, the following CFI resources will be helpful:
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Swot analysis: how to strengthen your business plan.
Every business, big or small needs a solid plan to succeed. A well-constructed business plan takes into account the strengths and weaknesses of a company and the opportunities and threats present in the marketplace. One of the most useful tools for assessing these factors is the SWOT analysis as it provides a comprehensive overview of a company's current situation and potential for growth. In this article, we will discuss what a SWOT analysis is, why it is important for businesses, who should conduct it, and how to conduct it effectively.
Have you ever wondered how businesses manage to evaluate all the internal and external factors that could affect their success? Welcome to the SWOT analysis. It's a strategic planning tool that helps businesses identify their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Strengths refer to internal factors that give a company an edge over its competitors. Think of a strong brand, loyal customer base, experienced employees, or efficient operations. Weaknesses, on the other hand, are internal factors that put a company at a disadvantage. These could be a weak brand, lack of funding, inexperienced employees, or outdated technology .
But what about external factors that could impact a business's success? That's where Opportunities and Threats come in. Opportunities are external factors that could help a company grow and succeed. This could include a growing market, new trends, technological advancements, or changes in regulations. Threats, on the other hand, are external factors that could harm a company's growth and success. Examples of threats could be economic downturns, increased competition, changes in consumer behavior, or natural disasters.
By conducting a SWOT analysis, businesses can make informed decisions about their strategic initiatives. By focusing their resources on areas with the greatest potential for growth and competitive advantage, businesses can increase their profitability, market share, and long-term success. So, whether you're a business strategist, executive, manager, or consultant, SWOT analysis can provide a fresh perspective on your company's current situation and potential for growth .
A SWOT analysis is essential for developing a business plan that maximizes a company's strengths, minimizes its weaknesses, and takes advantage of opportunities while mitigating threats.
Here are some of the reasons why a SWOT analysis is important for businesses:
Now that we know what a SWOT analysis is and why it is important for businesses, let's discuss how to conduct a SWOT analysis effectively. Here are the steps involved:
Once the SWOT analysis is complete, the next step is to use the information to develop a strategic plan that maximizes the strengths of the business, minimizes its weaknesses, takes advantage of opportunities, and mitigates threats.
A SWOT analysis can be conducted by anyone involved in the strategic planning process of a business. This can include business strategists , executives, managers, and consultants. Here are some of the benefits of conducting a SWOT analysis:
This information helps businesses to prioritize their key strategic initiatives, focus their resources on areas with the greatest potential for growth and competitive advantage, and develop a strategic plan that aligns with their goals and objectives. Ultimately, a SWOT analysis helps businesses to make more effective strategic decisions that can lead to increased profitability, market share, and long-term success.
To help illustrate the SWOT analysis process, let's take a look at an example of a SWOT analysis for a company in the fashion industry:
Using this SWOT analysis, the company could focus on expanding its distribution channels and international presence, reducing production costs, and investing in sustainable and diverse product offerings.
Q: Is a SWOT analysis only for large businesses? A: No, a SWOT analysis is beneficial for businesses of all sizes, including small businesses.
Q: Can a SWOT analysis be conducted for a specific project or product? A: Yes, a SWOT analysis can be conducted for a specific project or product to evaluate its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Q: How often should a SWOT analysis be conducted? A: It is recommended to conduct a SWOT analysis at least once a year or whenever there are significant changes in the industry, competition, or business environment.
Q: What should I do with the information gathered from a SWOT analysis? A: The information gathered from a SWOT analysis should be used to develop a strategic plan that maximizes strengths, minimizes weaknesses, takes advantage of opportunities, and mitigates threats.
In conclusion, a SWOT analysis is an important tool that can help businesses of all sizes and industries to identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. By conducting a SWOT analysis, businesses can gain a better understanding of their current situation and potential growth opportunities, enabling them to make informed business decisions and develop effective business strategies. As a strategic leader or business strategist, it is important to conduct a SWOT analysis regularly to stay up-to-date with changes in the industry and competition, and ensure that your business plan is relevant and effective in achieving your business goals.
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Swot analysis: the most overlooked business tool, and how to use it.
Alisha M Pennington is the owner of ATvantage Athletic Training and a business development mentor.
For those of us who never went to business school but found our way into entrepreneurship, it takes practical experience to determine which tools best serve us in the real world. After 10 years of starting and scaling multiple businesses, I can unequivocally state that SWOT analysis is one of the most efficient tools for quickly auditing a business at any stage and determining necessary next steps.
Having its origins date back to the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, SWOT analysis has been used across corporate planning for decades; however, it is equally applicable for businesses in any industry that are in the infant and scaling stages. It represents an opportunity to objectively approach the planning process in business while also providing accountability within each section so as not to lean too heavily into either strengths and opportunities or weaknesses and threats. For better or worse, it visually offers a snapshot of the current state of a business and market in a simple four-quadrant table.
Admittedly though, the exercise of conducting a SWOT can feel stale and/or incredibly daunting. With new techniques popping up regularly, it can be tempting to step away from the traditional approach and test out an alternative. But it isn’t called “trusty dusty” for no reason — it is tried and true! So, how does one go about utilizing this tool in their business? Here are three easy steps:
1. Conduct A Business Brain Dump
To effectively evaluate your business, you must be thorough in what is being considered. Whether you enlist heads of departments or you're a sole proprietor, it is important to look at the primary areas of your business and brain dump your inner workings associated with them. These can include, but are not limited to:
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• Legalities: This includes business entity formation, compliance, contracts/agreements, insurances, trademarks, licenses, governing oversight and contractors versus employees.
• Accounting: This includes taxes, accounting software, accounts payable and receivable, tracking income and expenses, projections, profit margins, budgeting, procedures for payment processing and cash flow.
• Quality control: This includes customer journey, onboarding/hiring procedures, compliance, customer and product reviews, quality improvement, customer service and processes and automation.
• Marketing: This includes current brand and messaging, public relations, website functionality, social media presence, future growth strategy or customer acquisition plan, scalability of current procedures and future marketing opportunities.
2. Categorize Your Responses
Once you have a full list of what's working and what needs work in your business, categorize it into three primary areas: current markets/strategies, current roadblocks/hurdles and future/long-term aspirations.
Within the current markets/strategies, list out what is going well, the areas you're surpassing the competition and what your market knows you for. In the current roadblocks/hurdles, detail those services you're trying to bring to market, any bottlenecks or systems/procedures that are inefficient or areas within your industry or market that pose a threat. Finally, in the future/long-term aspirations, share the information that is currently in R&D, the future direction of the market/industry and aspirational projections of the business.
3. Create Your SWOT
Use a template, write on a whiteboard or use paper and pen to draw the SWOT and then begin filling it in. This will require your business brain dump and your categorized responses.
Strengths are internal areas within your business that are well taken care of. These could be key personnel, particular characteristics or attributes within the business that give it an advantage or even areas that have been well-developed that put the business ahead of the competition. This could be as simple as strong branding or as exemplary as a nameworthy CEO. Scan your business brain dump and look for areas that stand out as "green" or "very good" or that you could easily respond with because they've been addressed for a long time. In the categorized responses, this will primarily be in the current markets/strategies.
Weaknesses are the internal areas within your business that need to be addressed or that prove to be roadblocks. This might be communication strategy or lack of efficient processes and systems. These might be patterns of behavior you know about your business, areas you purposely avoid because they bring up feelings of dread and may have even been avoided for a lack of knowledge or support to execute. When looking at your brain dump, you may have "redlined" these, let out an audible sigh or cringed at the thought of having to address them. And they're likely in the current roadblocks/hurdles areas of the categorized responses.
Opportunities are external areas in the environment or market that allow us to expand and create growth for the business. Sometimes this is a future version of the industry, known technology that is emerging, an offer/service that is actively being developed or partnerships that will elevate the brand. When looking over the business brain dump, these are the areas that really excite the business owner, probably are front of mind and may have additional resources allocated to them. In the categorized responses, they're either in the current markets/strategies or under the longer-term aspirations.
Threats are the external areas in the environment or market that pose danger to the current state or future of the business. These may have already affected the revenue or profit of the business or could be impending competition or a shift in the market creating concern for the current business model. These items keep the business owner awake at night or dreading opening the email/answering the phone. In the brain dump, these are lingering "in between the lines," likely not explicitly stated but known as the cause for reduced profit margins or limited growth.
Use SWOT analysis not just to determine the next steps for your business but to also help prioritize which areas to focus on. Then strategically detail the opportunity available, being careful to minimize threats and take full advantage of strengths. This can be done as consistently as required but is best served as an annual exercise to evaluate the procedural activity of the business year over year.
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Blog Business What Is a SWOT Analysis and Its Importance to Businesses
Written by: Cristian Oana Jan 21, 2022
You’ve heard that conducting a SWOT analysis creates the foundation for your business and marketing strategy—but what exactly is a SWOT analysis and how do you do it?
Learn what SWOT analysis is, how to conduct one and how you can integrate visuals into your SWOT analysis to persuade your audience or gain buy-in from investors—all can be done by using Venngage’s SWOT Analysis Maker .
What does swot stand for, what is a swot analysis, why is a swot analysis important, how do you conduct a swot analysis.
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats — the four key aspects of your business that you must assess to pave the way for a more productive brainstorming and strategic planning session.
Generally speaking, the SWOT analysis focuses on helping you identify and analyze the internal and external factors of a company or an organization.
When you conduct a SWOT analysis, you look at the internal factors (strengths and weaknesses) and external factors (opportunities and threats), and from there you can identify your business’s competitive advantages over your competitors and start developing your business strategy.
As such, SWOT analyses are especially useful tools for marketing departments and sales organizations . They can also be powerful tools in highly changeable industries like healthcare .
A SWOT analysis is often in the form of a quadrant or matrix, like this SWOT matrix:
Let’s take a look at what constitutes each internal and external factor of the SWOT framework.
Strengths are the internal factors and resources that support a successful outcome for an organization. These are the things that you are particularly excellent at or the things that set your business apart from its competitors.
A strength brings you competitive advantages over your competitors. If all your competitors offer high-quality products, then manufacturing high-quality products is not a strength in your market. Rather, it is deemed as a necessity.
Weaknesses are inherent in an organization, too. Focus on your people, resources, systems and procedures, and determine which of these need improvement or must be avoided.
A business’s weakness can come in the form of its workforce like in this SWOT analysis example:
Regularly assess your employees’ work performance using this template to enhance company productivity.
Don’t be afraid to acknowledge your weaknesses. Instead, embrace and address them. Be realistic now instead of ignoring the unpleasant truths.
Opportunities are typically born out of external situations. They are windows of possibilities, of something promising to happen. But you must be able to spot and exploit them. Do just that and you bring up your organization’s chances of trouncing the competition and, hopefully, of leading the market.
These opportunities don’t have to be big right away. Remember, every positive opportunity counts, even the small ones. What’s important is that you can grab them and take advantage of them immediately.
Use this SWOT analysis template to assist your brainstorming session. Make sure you have taken advantage of all the presented opportunities for your business.
Threats are the total opposite of opportunities. These are factors based on your company’s external environment that could negatively impact your business.
While opportunities could allow a company to thrive, threats could stunt your company’s growth and generally jeopardize your company’s success.
External threats may include changes in the market requirements, shortage of new employees, and supply chain problems. It is vital to take action against these before these could adversely affect your company.
For more examples of SWOT analysis templates, read on or check our blog posts: 20+ SWOT Analysis Templates, Examples & Best Practices
Return to Table of Contents
As previously established, SWOT analyses are an effective tool for planning, brainstorming and even decision-making.
The tool works more effectively if you conduct it while bearing a specific question or objective in mind such as taking advantage of a new business opportunity, responding to new trends, implementing new technology, or dealing with a competitor’s change in operations.
The SWOT analysis example below points out the opportunities presented to a grocery delivery company. Based on this analysis, you’d recognize that the strategy in the short term should focus on attracting a larger audience by optimizing the mobile app and improving the website’s SEO.
Since SWOT analysis helps an organization determine the areas that perform well, the areas they pinpoint are considered to be the fundamental success factors that will give your business the competitive advantage that it deserves.
SWOT also requires you to analyze your competitors to understand where you stand on the market, thus being able to point out your competitive advantages over others.
If you’re interested in learning more about competitor analysis , check out this post: How to Create a Competitor Analysis Report (Templates Included)
This SWOT analysis template can be used to generate a diagram where you can examine the aspects of your organization that can be used more to your advantage.
To help you put your organization in a better spot, conduct a SWOT analysis to identify your weaknesses so you can cut down or improve them even before they develop into a problem. As said before, be realistic in identifying your weaknesses to adequately deal with them.
The steps your competitors take may also be a threat to your business. Make sure you anticipate them and proactively ward off their marketing campaigns with this SWOT analysis template.
External factors such as a new government policy or your competitor’s new advertising campaign can be seen as threats to your business. Identify the threats looming around your business through a SWOT analysis. You may also find ways to ward them off depending on the strengths and weaknesses that you listed in your analysis.
Achieve your organization’s goals and objectives with the use of the information you have gathered from your SWOT analysis. Use the following steps to begin your journey.
From the beginning, you have to have a clear objective or a question in mind so you can get the most out of your SWOT analysis. For example, you may use the information you gathered to decide whether or not to push through with the launch of a new product or service to the market.
Here’s an example of a SWOT analysis conducted to examine the possibility of scaling for an apparel design business:
Understand your business and the industry and market it belongs to before you begin the SWOT analysis. Brainstorm with your team, business partners, investors, and clients to get a diverse range of perspectives. Don’t forget to take your competitors into account so find time to research about them, too!
Identify and list down your business’s strengths and weaknesses respectively. Your strengths may include those that relate to your workforce, financial resources, competitiveness, and your business location while your weaknesses may include your lack of innovative products and employee absenteeism.
Your goal should be to look back on your SWOT analysis and find that your weaknesses have already been resolved. Despite the emergence of new weaknesses over time, the fact that you have already addressed the old ones is a good indicator of your business’s growth.
Take note that your list does not need to be definitive during this part as you will still be organizing them at the fifth step.
Add what you have in your list to this SWOT analysis template:
Remember, you can always add icons or illustrations to the template to make it your own:
Or even apply your brand colors to it, using My Brand Kit :
Businesses must not fail to recognize the windows of opportunities presented to them, as well as looming threats lingering around it.
List down all possible external opportunities and threats for your business. Your opportunities may include innovative technologies, potential investors and partnerships, training programs, and a diversified marketplace while your threats may include unemployment growth, emergence of competitors, and the uncertainty of global markets.
Note that the same item could not be listed down as both an opportunity and a threat.
Add your opportunities and threats to your SWOT analysis design. If you don’t like the template above, here’s another one:
After completing the steps above, you will have four different lists—one each for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This is where you work out the hierarchy of importance among the issues, which are the most important ones and which can be dealt with at a later time.
Review your prioritized list by asking how your strengths and weaknesses can take advantage of the opportunities listed and counteract the threats listed respectively. Also consider the things you would need to get control of your weaknesses to take advantage of the opportunities as well as the ways to minimize your weaknesses to push through your identified threats.
After answering those, you may begin developing your strategies to achieve your business goals and objectives.
Start brainstorming, researching and developing strategies for your business with the help of SWOT analyses. You can always customize our SWOT analysis template and add it to your report , presentation or infographic to share with colleagues or investors (and guess what, we have templates for those too!)
Start creating your own SWOT analysis for free using Venngage’s SWOT Analysis Maker —no design experience required.
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BUSINESS STRATEGIES
You can be a seasoned company with an established business plan, or be starting out and create a website for your new venture. Either way, identifying and understanding your competitors at each step of the process can lead to building a better business strategy.
This is where a SWOT analysis comes into play. It is a useful tool for making improvements and keeping your marketing goals on track. In this guide, we’ll explain what this method is all about and how to do a SWOT analysis of your own.
SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT analysis is a strategy used by businesses for measuring and evaluating their overall performance, and that of competitors, in an objective manner. All these factors help business owners make smarter decisions for their company, such as if a venture should grow into a new field or rebrand itself.
The first two parameters, strengths and weaknesses, involve internal factors such as your reputation, team, location and intellectual property. These considerations are not necessarily permanent, and can fluctuate over time. It’s within an organization's own control to keep or change them (which can happen for the better or the worse). So, assuming you want to make a positive change, you’re going to need to put forth the effort and time to see that happen.
Opportunities and threats are related to external influences such as competitors, market trends, and prices of materials. Unfortunately, these are not within an organization’s control, and therefore you are not able to change them. That said, successful businesses and corporations learn how to work with these factors to their advantage, and also adapt their strategies accordingly in order to compete with others in the field.
As mentioned earlier, SWOT analysis is a lengthy process that can help different types of businesses draw conclusions by enabling them to see the bigger picture clearly. Once they have obtained valuable data and insight, only then can businesses formulate a clever and strategic plan accordingly.
Furthermore, a SWOT analysis forces you to examine your business in new and interesting ways vis-à-vis your strengths and weaknesses. This preparedness enables you to not only be ready for any challenges that might impact your business, but also offers a deeper understanding of potential opportunities or threats within your target market .
SWOT analysis should be a collaborative and inclusive process, so before you can really dive in, be sure to assemble your partners, stakeholders and any other decision-makers who will bring their ideas to the table. This way you’ll ensure you hear multiple opinions and diverse outlooks that’ll enrich your overall SWOT discussion ahead.
Below, we’ll walk through the stages of how to do a SWOT analysis for reviewing both your own company and competitors. For each one, grab a white board, sheet of paper, or another note-taking device. On this, create four sections for each company you’ll analyze. Label the sections with these parts: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And remember that when it comes to this type of analysis, leave out the bias. The more honest you are, the better and more useful your results will be.
In order to get a better sense of what a complete SWOT analysis might look like, we’ve taken the example of a hypothetical massage therapist who is starting a service business.
Identify your company strengths
Be aware of your weaknesses
Recognize business opportunities
Understand potential threats
Make a business plan
Strengths are the big things that a particular company is doing well, which gives them a competitive advantage in their industry and benefits their customers. For your own business, identifying your strengths can help you leverage these by making them stronger.
For competitors, consider their strengths a goal to aim for. Ask yourself, How can I do what they do, but better? or, How can I create my own twist on this idea that outsmarts theirs?
Here are a few questions to consider as you begin your SWOT analysis:
What are this company’s competitive advantages in the industry?
What features do they offer that are unique and valuable?
What processes are they excelling in?
What draws customers in?
Are they a market leader? If so, how did they get here?
Is the organization expanding and hiring new employees?
What strong assets does the company have, i.e., intellectual property, stakeholders, buildings, etc.?
These are the aspects of an organization that could use some improvement. During this stage of a SWOT analysis, it’s especially important to be honest with yourself. It might be a bit uncomfortable at first, but if you don’t draw attention to a weakness, there won’t be room for you to make it better.
Note that many of the points you analyzed from the strengths above can be addressed in this section as well, but with a reverse meaning. For example, a strength might be “expanding their business and hiring new people,” while a weakness could be “losing employees to competition.” So think about those as options in addition to these kinds of questions:
What could this company do better?
What processes could be improved?
Is this company lacking an established reputation?
What is this company struggling with compared to others in the industry?
What do customers often complain about?
Is the organization losing employees?
What assets is the company lacking, from patents to funding to employee positions and more?
Owning a business is all about seizing the moment. Opportunities are probably the same for yourself and your competition, if not very similar. Recognizing them is the first step, and taking advantage of them before your competition does is the second. Likewise, you should do so at the determined time that makes the most sense for your business, depending on what stage of development you’re in. Here are more questions for doing a SWOT analysis the right way:
What is the latest trend, such as a green initiative to use recycled packaging or working with social media influencers for promotion?
What are some upcoming events to take advantage of, such as a trade show, holiday or recent news release?
Is there a loophole in your market, such as a cheaper supplier or opportunity to eliminate the middleman?
Is there an opportunity to expand to a larger building or better location?
Could the business be sold soon? Or on the other hand, could this business buy smaller, local businesses to expand?
These are external factors which can put a business in a negative light. And just like opportunities, threats are often similar for both you and your competitors. However, some threats can be individual to an organization, such as a particularly bad PR scandal from an unhappy customer. It’s extremely important to learn how to mitigate these, and prevent them from turning into larger issues in the future.
Although threats come last in the SWOT analysis, it might be a good idea to address them first off paper. Like a small fire, if you don’t act quickly, threats can sometimes cause irreplaceable damage.
Here are examples of potential threats:
Is a customer expressly unhappy with a particular product or service?
Is the market fluctuating, i.e., are prices rising, are consumers purchasing alternatives, etc.?
Are there new government regulations to watch out for?
What is it that they are doing better? Do some market research to find out.
Will new technology become available in the near future that could make this business’s products or services obsolete?
Are consumers no longer expressing interest in these services?
Now that you’ve laid out the most important components affecting the success of your organization and your competition, you have the tools you need to develop a strategy. This plan will guide you to make improvements in your company, and compete on a level playground with your competition.
Consider these five steps in working through your plan:
Get feedback on your own SWOT analysis from your employees and other relevant stakeholders.
Draw out a plan, which involves using your strengths to counteract your weaknesses, as well as finding opportunities through your threats. If you’re just starting a business , write out these components as a part of your business plan , too.
Communicate your ideas to your team members, making sure that everyone is on board and held accountable.
Prioritize your action items, starting with the most important factors first. (Perhaps these are your threats if they are urgent matters.)
Execute your plan with a business proposal . Introduce the plan in the format of listed action items for your team, making sure to assign a designated person for each topic.
As your business continues to grow and evolve, know that this is just a snapshot of a moment in time. Many of these factors are subject to change at a later date. It’s a good idea to come back to this exercise in the future so that you can properly assess where your business stands in your industry and how far along you came.
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You can better understand your businesses strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats by using a SWOT analysis. Identify what your business is doing well and how you can improve with our SWOT analysis template.
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Download our swot analysis template, complete your swot analysis, use your swot analysis.
A SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool used to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of your business.
Developing a SWOT analysis can help you look at your business in a new way and from different directions. It can also help you to:
Our template can help you develop your SWOT analysis.
SWOT template
You can start the process by gathering a group of employees or advisors who have different perspectives on your business. If you don’t have employees, you can ask family members, business advisors or mentors. The key is to have different points of view.
Using the prompting questions below as a guide, you can conduct a brainstorming session to discuss ideas about each SWOT category. After brainstorming, create a final prioritised list of points in our SWOT analysis template. List the factors in each category from highest to lowest priority.
Strengths are internal, positive parts of your business. These are things that are within your control. Ask yourself:
Weaknesses are internal, negative factors. These are things that you might need to improve on to be competitive. Ask yourself:
Opportunities are external, positive factors that may give a competitive advantage and contribute to success. Ask yourself:
Threats include external factors beyond your control that may put your business at risk. Consider putting in place contingency plans for dealing with them if they occur. Ask yourself:
Once you have completed your SWOT analysis, it can be used to develop strategies for achieving your business goals. You can create a plan to continue building on your strengths while improving on your weaknesses. When using your SWOT analysis to create a strategy, ask yourself:
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A SWOT analysis helps you make smart, informed business decisions.
Understanding your company’s position within your market or industry and knowing how and where you can grow is critical for any business owner. This knowledge allows you to develop your company strategically rather than wasting your efforts trying to expand into a market that doesn’t align with your business or being steamrolled by a surprise competitor.
SWOT — which stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats” — is a type of analysis that helps you develop your business strategy by comparing internal factors (strengths and weaknesses) against external factors (opportunities and threats). Examples of internal factors include things that you have control over and can change, such as your staff or your intellectual property. External factors are things that you cannot control, such as consumer trends or competitors.
A SWOT analysis has four quadrants:
The analysis provides you with an accurate picture of what your business is currently doing well and how it can improve.
“[A SWOT analysis] gives you a firm grasp of what is affecting your business internally and externally,” said Lynne Pratt, creative content expert. “By carefully evaluating the analysis, a business can find new ways of progressing and achieving growth .”
A SWOT analysis gives you a detailed, unbiased overview of your business as a whole or a specific product or campaign. It can also help train your brain to consider every factor that could affect your project or business. When you’re facing a tough issue or if you’re just unsure of your current strategy, a SWOT analysis illuminates details so you can formulate actionable plans based on each of the four quadrants.
For example, if you were considering opening a new location for your business, you could run a SWOT analysis to see if you are in a good position to do so. You could also use it to identify outside factors that you will need to plan for.
“A SWOT analysis is useful so that you don’t get caught entirely off-guard,” said David LaVine, founder of RocLogic Marketing. “You [should] do a SWOT analysis for each application area you’re considering operating in.”
“We conduct [analyses] every six months as a rule in our business,” said Alistair Dodds, marketing director and co-founder of Ever Increasing Circles. “They act as a great check on how the competition has evolved in that time period.” [Discover five effective ways to differentiate your product .]
A SWOT analysis should be a collaborative effort between several levels of employment within your company. Founders and leaders should be the most closely involved, but to gain a true picture of your business, gather input from a group of people that can contribute several perspectives.
“It’s vital to go through your analysis with key stakeholders,” said Dodds. “When you identify weaknesses, it’s a great time to get other department heads and staff to suggest solutions — you’ll be amazed at the creativity and problem-solving inherent in your team if they are given the opportunity [for] input.”
If you’re a solo operation, ask close friends or related professionals, such as your accountant, lawyer or advisor, for input. Having plenty of outside perspectives helps make your analysis as well-rounded and objective as possible.
The first step of a SWOT analysis is to create your grid. Start with strengths in the upper left corner, then weaknesses in the upper right corner, opportunities in the bottom left and threats at the bottom right of the grid.
Next, fill in each quadrant. An easy way to do this is to ask yourself questions that apply to each box. Here are some suggestions.
Here are some additional points to consider as you fill in your quadrants:
Your quadrants do not have to be perfect — you can always create multiple drafts of your analysis, editing what you have filled in as you go. Host a brainstorming meeting to complete your first draft.
After you have filled in the quadrants, review each quadrant and evaluate your results.
In preparation for these conversations, review some of the most important terms for business owners to enhance your ability to assess each area of the SWOT analysis and brainstorm solutions.
To evaluate your SWOT analysis effectively, start with your strengths and don’t brush them off, said Pratt. “You might feel that because you’ve got these nailed down that you don’t need to do anything with them, but this is wrong,” she said. “There is always room for improvement and working on your strengths, as well as [with] the [other quadrants], will help them remain your strengths.”
Next, look at your weaknesses and identify which aspects of your business each weakness is related to. For example, is poor customer retention due to staff? Location? Competitors? “Identify where the problem is coming from so you can begin to plan to address it,” said Pratt.
Then, you can see which of your threats are related to your weaknesses and if any of them are caused by something you can change. Try to connect your strengths to ways you can combat threats.
Finally, consider whether there are time constraints that could impact your opportunities. Are any of them short-term or seasonal? If so, make it a priority to hit those opportunities first and create an action plan for taking advantage of them.
Nathan Thompson, e-commerce and growth lead at The Others Beauty Co., said his company splits their business opportunities into short-, mid- and long-term goals. They set deadlines for each goal to ensure it gets done. “SWOT results should be analyzed and evaluated in order of actionability,” he said. “Having deadlines set for each milestone ensures accountability for all parties.”
As you’re evaluating your results, remember that your SWOT analysis is only a starting point, not an actionable plan. “Don’t confuse SWOT for strategy,” said Greg Githens, executive and leadership coach at Catalyst and Cadre. You are still responsible for developing a strategy that will take you from where you are to where you want to be, and SWOT provides a roadmap for that strategy.
To see how SWOT analysis works, consider this example:
Soft-Touch makes pads that attach by Velcro to the plastic face mask worn by sleep apnea sufferers to help them breathe while they sleep. The company founder herself has sleep apnea, and she developed the product to increase the comfort of wearing the mask and to eliminate the marks it left on her face the following morning.
The company has largely grown its sales through word-of-mouth. A major sleep apnea equipment maker wants Soft-Touch to supply the pads for all of its masks. To satisfy the increased demand, Soft-Touch would have to outsource its manufacturing.
Here is a sample SWOT analysis for Soft-Touch as they consider this opportunity:
Notice that the SWOT analysis doesn’t provide an answer; rather, it provides a framework to help formulate an answer and allows you to see exactly what the opportunities are (an expanded market share and increased revenue), what weaknesses currently limit the company (lack of funding and marketing expertise, limited manufacturing capacity), its current strengths (unique proposition and trusted brand) and the threats it could face if it takes the opportunity (less control and need for financing).
“Taking time to think strategically will lead to ways you can streamline to get more done as well as take your business into new directions that can benefit (or even save) the company,” said Joshua Ladick, president of GSA Focus.
Additional reporting by Sean Peek.
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An acronym standing for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, a SWOT Analysis is designed to help you analyze your company’s capabilities against the realities of your business environment. Doing so allows you to direct your business toward areas where your abilities are the strongest and your opportunities are abundant. It also allows you to develop short and long-term strategies for your business. A well-developed SWOT analysis will:
When writing your SWOT Analysis, we recommend involving employees with different perspectives and stakes in your company, for example, management, sales, customer service, and customers.
To write a SWOT Analysis for a business plan, we recommend following these four steps. You can use a four-square SWOT Analysis template, or if more manageable, you can make lists for each category.
Example of a four-square template:
After you’ve gathered the right group of employees together, brainstorm your company’s strengths and weaknesses and its opportunities and threats, first individually and then collectively.
Strengths and weaknesses are internal to your company and can change over time with work. Examples of internal factors include:
Opportunities and threats are external, happening whether you want them to or not, and can’t be changed. Examples of external factors include:
Strengths refer to the positive, tangible and intangible attributes internal to your company that are within your control.
To help you determine what your company’s strengths are, ask yourself:
Any aspect of your business that detracts from the value you offer or places you at a competitive disadvantage is a weakness. To determine your company’s weaknesses, ask yourself these questions:
Opportunities
Opportunities are attractive external factors that denote reasons your business is likely to thrive. To identify your business opportunities, ask yourself:
Any external factor beyond your control that could place your strategy, or the business itself, at risk is a threat. Although you have no control over threats, you can benefit by having a contingency plan to address them if and when they occur. To identify threats, ask yourself:
Once you’ve brainstormed your lists of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, we recommend ranking them through a voting process. At the end of this process, you should have a prioritized list of ideas, with one person, usually the CEO, having the final call on priority.
Divide your strengths into two groups:
Divide your weaknesses into two groups:
Continually refer to your lists as you make decisions that contribute to your business, including developing strategies and actions for capitalizing on opportunities. Questions that can guide your decision making include:
Once you have finalized your SWOT Analysis and added it to your business plan, don’t just leave it and forget it. A SWOT Analysis is a crucial element in any business plan and should be revisited regularly, at least annually.
Suppose your business is facing significant changes in the marketplace or competitive conditions, experiencing growth problems, or failing to meet goals. In that case, you may want to revisit your SWOT Analysis more frequently.
It should reflect the world around you as it is, not the way it was. It’s an invaluable tool for leveraging your company’s strengths, minimizing threats, taking advantage of available opportunities, strategic planning, and determining company objectives.
At Bsbcon, we are available to provide support and guidance with your company’s SWOT Analysis, ensuring that it reflects the current state of your business and considers all factors needed to ensure your business’s short and long-term goals and successes. Once your SWOT Analysis is complete, we will work with you to incorporate it seamlessly into your business plan.
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Business analysis techniques are essential tools and methodologies employed by organizations to assess and enhance their processes, strategies, and outcomes. These techniques serve as the foundation for informed decision-making, enabling businesses to identify areas for improvement, anticipate potential challenges, and capitalize on opportunities.
Business analysis techniques encompass a variety of methods and frameworks designed to examine and improve different aspects of an organization. These techniques help businesses understand their operations, improve processes, and achieve their objectives. Business analysis techniques can be used individually or in combination, depending on the specific needs and context of the business analysis project. From SWOT Analysis to PESTLE Analysis, these techniques provide structured approaches to problem-solving and strategic planning . By visualizing data and processes, business analysis techniques aid in aligning organizational goals with actionable insights.
Implementing effective business analysis techniques is crucial for several reasons:
Enhanced Decision-Making: By providing a comprehensive understanding of the internal and external factors affecting a business, these techniques facilitate better strategic decisions.
Risk Management: Business analysis frameworks like Porter’s Five Forces help identify potential threats and competitive pressures, allowing businesses to proactively mitigate risks.
Improved Efficiency: Techniques such as Business Process Modelling (BPM) enable organizations to map and optimize their processes, enhancing operational efficiency and resource utilization.
Strategic Alignment: Methods like MOST Analysis ensure that an organization’s mission, objectives, strategies, and tactics are aligned, promoting cohesive and strategic growth.
Innovation and Flexibility: Agile and Scrum frameworks support iterative development, fostering innovation and adaptability in dynamic business environments.
With the integration of visual collaboration tools like Creately , organizations can streamline the application of these business analysis processes and methods. Creately’s platform supports visual modeling, collaborative planning, and data-integrated diagrams, enhancing the overall effectiveness of business analysis.
1. swot analysis.
SWOT Analysis is a cornerstone in the array of business analysis techniques and is extensively appreciated for its simplicity and effectiveness. SWOT analysis is a widely used business analysis technique that helps organizations identify and understand their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Opportunities
It’s instrumental in strategic planning, helping to identify areas for improvement and opportunities for growth. In 2024, integrating the SWOT Analysis tool from Creately can further enhance its effectiveness by visually mapping out each component, enabling better comprehension and collaboration among team members.
PESTLE Analysis is another fundamental business analysis method that focuses on external macro-environmental factors affecting organizations. It evaluates Political, Economic, Sociocultural, Technological, Legal, and Environmental aspects to help businesses identify potential opportunities and threats from the broader landscape.
Technological
Environmental
This analysis is crucial for understanding the external environment’s impact on business strategies. Creately can facilitate PESTLE Analysis by providing user-friendly templates and visual aids, making it easier to organize and present complex data comprehensively.
Porter’s Five Forces is a powerful framework for assessing industry attractiveness and profitability. This is a business analysis technique developed by Michael E. Porter to understand the competitive forces that shape an industry and influence an organization’s strategy. It examines five key forces: threat of new entrants, bargaining power of buyers and suppliers, threat of substitutes, and competitive rivalry.
1. Competitive Rivalry
2. Threat of New Entrants
3. Bargaining Power of Suppliers
4. Bargaining Power of Buyers
5. Threat of Substitutes
By evaluating these forces, businesses can understand the competitive dynamics of their industry and formulate strategic responses. Utilizing Creately’s Porter’s Five Forces Tool can aid in mapping these forces, enabling teams to visualize and discuss strategic options effectively.
Business Process Modelling (BPM) is essential for representing and analyzing business processes through visual representations. This technique helps identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas for improvement in workflows.
Process Modeling
Process Design
Process Implementation
Process Monitoring
Definition : Tracking and analyzing the performance of business processes. Examples : Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), dashboards, and real-time analytics.
Process Optimization
Definition : Continuously improving business processes based on performance data and feedback. Examples : Identifying bottlenecks, implementing process changes, and adopting best practices.
BPM is not only vital for operational optimization but also for aligning processes with business strategies. Creately’s support for data-integrated diagrams and visualization BPM tool makes it an excellent platform for BPM, allowing teams to create clear, interactive models that enhance understanding and collaboration. Read more on Creately’s guide on how to improve Business Process Modelling.
The Agile methodology and the Scrum framework have become popular for their emphasis on flexibility, collaboration, and iterative development. Agile focuses on responding rapidly to changes and delivering value incrementally, while Scrum organizes work into sprints, promoting continuous improvement and team collaboration.
A broad project management philosophy emphasizing flexibility, collaboration, and customer satisfaction. | A specific framework within Agile used primarily for managing software development projects. | |
Iterative and incremental development. | Iterative development using fixed-length sprints. | |
General guidelines and principles. | Specific roles, events, and artifacts. | |
Based on the Agile Manifesto with 12 guiding principles. | Defined by a set of roles (Product Owner, Scrum Master, Development Team), events (Sprint, Daily Scrum, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective), and artifacts (Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Increment). | |
Highly flexible, can be adapted to various types of projects. | More structured, best suited for projects where requirements may change rapidly. | |
No defined roles; teams are usually self-organizing. | Defined roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master, Development Team. | |
Emphasizes working software over comprehensive documentation, but allows flexibility based on project needs. | Minimal documentation; focuses on creating working increments of the product. | |
No mandatory meetings, but regular reviews and adaptations are encouraged. | Specific meetings: Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective. | |
Continuous planning throughout the project lifecycle. | Planning occurs at the beginning of each sprint. | |
Projects are continuous with no fixed end date. | Sprints are time-boxed, typically lasting 2-4 weeks. | |
Continuous delivery of product increments. | Delivery of a potentially shippable product increment at the end of each sprint. | |
Various metrics can be used depending on the project. | Specific metrics such as velocity, burndown charts, and sprint progress. | |
Projects requiring flexibility and frequent changes. | Projects needing a structured framework to manage frequent changes and iterative development. |
Integrating Agile and Scrum practices with visual tools like Creately, especially through the use of visual Kanban board software, makes workflow management more intuitive. Creately’s collaborative planning tools enable teams to visualize tasks, track progress, and make adjustments swiftly, ensuring that projects stay on track and objectives are met efficiently.
Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a method used to identify the underlying causes of problems or incidents to prevent their recurrence. RCA aims to uncover the fundamental issues that lead to problems rather than just addressing the symptoms. By identifying root causes, organizations can implement corrective actions that prevent future occurrences. Root Cause Analysis is a critical tool for problem-solving and continuous improvement in any organization. By systematically identifying and addressing the underlying causes of problems, organizations can enhance their processes, prevent future issues, and achieve better overall performance. Creately’s Root Cause Analysis tool provides user-friendly templates and visual aids, making it easier to organize and present complex data comprehensively.
Stakeholder Analysis is a crucial technique in business analysis and project management. It involves identifying and assessing the impact, influence, and interest of various stakeholders on a project or business initiative. Effective stakeholder mapping analysis ensures that the needs and concerns of all relevant parties are considered, leading to more successful outcomes.
By systematically identifying and understanding stakeholders' interests and influence, organizations can develop effective engagement strategies, manage expectations, and ensure that all relevant parties are considered in decision-making processes. This leads to better project outcomes and stronger relationships with stakeholders. Integrating the Stakeholder Analysis Tool from Creately can further enhance its effectiveness by visually mapping out each component, enabling better comprehension and collaboration among team members.
Customer Journey Mapping is a powerful business analysis method that helps organizations visualize and understand the customer’s experience from their perspective.
This technique is essential for identifying touchpoints, pain points, and opportunities for enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customer Journey Mapping aims to create a visual representation of the customer’s experience across various stages and touchpoints with a product, service, or brand. It helps businesses understand and improve the customer experience by identifying areas where the process can be streamlined or enhanced.
1. design thinking.
Design Thinking is a powerful methodology centered around empathy, ideation, and prototyping. By focusing on understanding the user’s experience, businesses can design solutions that truly meet user needs. This technique involves five stages: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Design Thinking fosters innovation by encouraging iterative feedback and collaboration among diverse teams. It’s particularly useful for addressing complex problems and developing user-centric products.
MOST Analysis stands for Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics. This framework helps organizations maintain strategic alignment by breaking down their mission into specific, actionable steps. The process begins by defining the mission, followed by identifying objectives to achieve that mission. Subsequently, organizations develop strategies and tactics to implement these strategies effectively. MOST Analysis is integral for ensuring that every business action aligns with the overarching goals and vision.
MoSCoW Prioritization is a technique used to prioritize requirements based on their importance. It categorizes requirements into four groups: Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have. This method ensures that essential requirements (Must haves) are addressed first, enabling effective resource allocation and project management. MoSCoW Prioritization is especially useful in Agile development environments, where it supports iterative and incremental delivery.
CATWOE stands for Clients, Actors, Transformation, Worldview, Owners, and Environment. This technique is used to analyze how proposed changes will impact different stakeholders. By considering the perspectives of clients and actors, understanding the transformation process, and evaluating the worldview and environmental constraints, businesses can develop well-rounded strategies. CATWOE helps in identifying potential conflicts and areas that need more attention, making it a valuable tool for comprehensive problem-solving.
Brainstorming is a group activity designed to generate a wide range of ideas and solutions. This creative process encourages open discussion and leverages diverse perspectives, leading to innovative solutions. Brainstorming techniques are highly effective for root cause analysis and identifying multiple approaches to a problem. Integrating tools like Creately’s Brainstorming Chart maker can enhance the brainstorming process by providing visual aids and collaborative spaces where teams can map ideas, create diagrams, and track their thought process in real-time.
Integrating business analysis techniques with advanced visual tools can greatly improve your brainstorming, planning, and execution processes. Creately stands out as a platform that facilitates such integration effectively, providing a seamless experience for business analysts, project managers, and corporate strategists. Here, we explore how Creately supports different business analysis frameworks and improves collaboration.
Creately offers a range of powerful features tailored for business analysis:
Diagrams and Template Libraries: Creately offers 8000+ professional templates/diagrams and 200,000+ examples spanning across industries to get a head start.
Infinite Canvas: Creately’s Infinite Canvas makes it easy to work on projects and serves as a central hub. Creately allows users to drag drop shapes or datasets, embed external content which makes it a great tool.
Real-time collaboration: Features like synchronous editing, real-time mouse tracking, real-time collaboration, include add and invite users, sharing documents and comments and in-app video conferencing make remote collaboration smooth and effective, emulating an in-person teamwork environment.
Data-integrated diagrams: Creately allows users to create diagrams that integrate live data , attaching notes and documents to diagrams ensuring real-time updates and a single source of truth.
Collaborative planning tools: With tools like Kanban boards, Gantt charts, and user story maps, teams can plan and execute projects collaboratively.
AI-powered tools: Enhance efficiency and accuracy with smart suggestions and automated diagramming capabilities. Explore Creately VIZ for more insight on AI capabilities.
Business Process Modelling is crucial for visualizing complex workflows and identifying inefficiencies. With Creately, you can easily create detailed BPM diagrams that support better decision-making and process optimization. Visual collaboration tools like the infinite canvas enable teams to map out processes in detail and iterate on them collaboratively. For example:
Agile and Scrum methodologies are essential for maintaining flexibility and iterative development in projects. Creately’s Kanban board software offer an integrated solution for managing Agile workflows:
By leveraging Creately’s robust platform, business analysis techniques like BPM and Agile can be effectively integrated to enhance collaboration, planning, and execution. This fusion of business analysis methods with visual collaboration tools not only improves efficiency but also drives better project outcomes.
Case study: implementing swot analysis for strategic planning.
One real-world example where SWOT analysis was pivotal involves a mid-sized e-commerce company looking to expand its market reach. By using SWOT analysis, the company meticulously identified its internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats. This method provided a comprehensive view of the market landscape, allowing them to formulate a robust strategy that aligned with their strengths and addressed vulnerabilities.
Highlights of the Case Study:
Another illustrative example is an IT services firm that utilized MOST analysis to realign its strategic priorities amid rapid technological changes. By focusing on their Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics, they could ensure that all business activities remained cohesive and purpose-driven. This approach was essential in maintaining alignment between their overarching goals and the specific actions undertaken to achieve them.
Key Outcomes:
These case studies underscore the significance of employing structured business analysis techniques to drive strategic decisions. A crucial lesson learned is the importance of continuous assessment and adaptation. Utilizing tools like Creately can enhance these techniques, offering visual collaboration features that streamline planning, documentation, and execution across teams.
By integrating business analysis methods with Creately’s visual platform, businesses can:
In conclusion, whether employing SWOT, MOST, or any other business analysis technique, leveraging visual collaboration tools enhances overall effectiveness, leading to better alignment and successful outcomes.
In the dynamic landscape of modern business, employing robust business analysis techniques is essential for strategic decision-making, risk management, and process optimization. Techniques like SWOT, PESTLE, Porter’s Five Forces, BPM, Agile, and Scrum offer structured frameworks to assess and improve various organizational aspects. Emerging methodologies like Design Thinking, MOST Analysis, MoSCoW Prioritization, CATWOE, and Brainstorming further enrich the analytical toolkit, fostering innovation and adaptability.
The integration of these techniques with advanced visual tools like Creately significantly enhances their application. Creately’s features—such as data-integrated diagrams, collaborative planning tools, real-time collaboration, and AI-powered assistance—streamline the analysis process, making it more efficient and effective. By leveraging Creately, organizations can visualize complex processes, ensure strategic alignment, and respond swiftly to market changes, ultimately driving better project outcomes and sustainable growth.
Join over thousands of organizations that use Creately to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute their projects successfully.
Heroshe is a content specialist and a writer at Creately, online diagramming and collaboration tool. He is responsible for creating engaging, informative, and high-quality content that helps users understand and utilize the platform's features effectively. He mainly focuses on making complex concepts easy to grasp, and is passionate about art & music.
Introduction
While being engaged with the role of a business analyst , one should acquire the skill of how to perform a SWOT analysis with an aim to assist in making effective decisions and strategic planning. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. SWOT analysis refers to a structured framework with the purpose and scope of assessing internal and external factors affecting a business or another project. SWOT analysis allows a business analyst to identify most of the key strategic insights and pave the way for effective business decisions.
Basic Understanding of SWOT Analysis
On its very basic terms, SWOT analysis involves the assessment of the following four crucial factors:
Best Practices to carry out an in-depth SWOT Analysis
Define what it is to achieve and accomplish: The objective and scope of the SWOT assessment have to be determined before getting into the actual analysis. Are you assessing a project, in particular, scanning the market conditions or in strategic planning? The objectives correctly focus the analysis on the business goals and thereby orient them.
An effective SWOT analysis is harnessed on credible sources. Research for credible information should be derived from market research reports, customer feedback, financial statements, industry benchmarking, and competitor analysis. This way, one ensures that enough data is retrieved for an all-rounded analysis to ensure insight accuracy.
Engage key stakeholders in the SWOT analysis and ensure the inclusion of all views. These will range from internal teams and management to customers and industry experts. Their input gives an overall view of the business and helps in unearthing vital elements likely to affect a strategic move.
Begin with the identification and evaluation of the internal environment for strengths and weaknesses. The strengths could be a strong brand reputation, product innovation, skilled workforce, and robust operational processes. The weaknesses may be represented by constraints of resources and outmoded technology, skill deficiencies, or weak market penetration.
Also, consider the opportunities and threats that dwell outside the business. Opportunities can be those that emanate out of emerging market trends, rapidly evolving technology, new consumer behaviors, or even beneficial regulation. Threats may include competitive pressure, economic downturn, unfavorable changes in regulations, or even a shift in the marketplace.
Organize the findings in a SWOT matrix—a graphic tool which segregates the major strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats into four quadrants. This helps much in keeping the information ordered but also in the strategic discussion and decision-making. It represents an overall view of the relationships among internal capabilities with external factors that may have an impact on the business.
Not every aspect of the SWOT analysis will lie on a level playing field of strategy. Prioritize key insights based on their potential implications for business objectives and goals. Verify through qualitative and quantitative analysis so that strategic decisions are established on thorough data and insightful thinking.
Turn SWOT findings into strategy and recommendations. Play to the opportunities identified from strength, work on weaknesses to avoid the threats identified, and create plans consistent with the overall business objectives. Each strategy should also have objectives, timelines, and performance measures to ensure that progress is tracked towards success.
The SWOT analysis is, therefore, a dynamic instrument, always retained under continuous surveillance, revisiting, and modifying. Business environments keep seeing continuous change through fluctuating market dynamics, technological changes, and the nature of the competition. Refresh your SWOT analysis periodically to consider changes in internal capabilities and external factors for strategies that are relevant and stay effective over time.
Other Aspects to SWOT Analysis
Explore additional dimensions of SWOT analysis, including its application in project management for assessing feasibility, managing risks, and aligning project goals with organizational objectives.
SWOT analysis in project management can help in evaluating project feasibility, estimating the level of risk, synchronizing project goals with organizational objectives, and much more. It will help project managers be prepared for the upcoming project challenges, booms in opportunities, and to finally take appropriate decisions within the project cycle.
Integrate SWOT analysis with other analysis and framework tools in order to enhance its effectiveness. For example, conducting a PESTLE analysis is another major pre-strategizing exercise targeted for refining and developing the already identified strengths and weaknesses in the internal environment, along with opportunities and threats in the external environment. These tools, when combined, paint a vivid understanding of the internal and external forces driving business strategy and performance.
SWOT Analysis for Strategic Decision-making
In addition to the core components of SWOT analysis, exploring further dimensions such as scenario planning and competitive benchmarking enhances its strategic value.
Use SWOT analysis to perform your scenario planning. Consider a given number of scenarios about various combinations of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to be better placed to plan for a range of different outcomes.
Compare the results of your SWOT analysis with industry benchmarks and competitor analysis to know competitive positioning and areas for difference or improvement.
Integrate SWOT analysis findings into the process of long-term strategic planning. Design business strategies attuned to identified strengths and opportunities but at the same time eliminate weaknesses and reduce threats for the achievement of sustainable growth and relative advantage.
Conducting a SWOT analysis as a business analyst means more than merely assessing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It is all about an attempt to translate the findings into real-action strategies that will drive business success. Business analysts can bring the best out by making informed decisions, overcoming challenges, and turning odds into opportunities in an ever-competitive marketplace by following best practices and considering insights through SWOT analysis.
To further your skills in doing SWOT analysis and your career as a business analyst, consider opportunities in professional development, which could be in the form of business analyst classes or getting you into business analyst certification . These programs deliver invaluable knowledge, tools, and techniques that make one effective in strategic analysis for organic growth.
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How to conduct a swot analysis in project management.
July 24, 2024
The ‘Flaw of Averages’ theory by Sam Savage, a Standard University professor, warns us of the danger of relying on average values to predict uncertain events. Project management often falls victim to this, as teams base decisions on past averages to set budgets, allocate resources, or define project schedules.
The result? An increased risk of project failure because the project manager did not account for extreme scenarios (best-case or worst-case).
Instead of solely relying on averages to make project decisions, you need to use a strategic framework like a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis in project management gives you an overview of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and accounts for extremes. Using it can set up your project for success and help you build a competitive edge.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss what a SWOT analysis is and how you can conduct it to reduce the risk of project failure.
Conducting a swot analysis in project management, how to use swot analysis for strategic planning, benefits of effective swot analysis in project management, common challenges of swot analysis in project management, try clickup for swot analysis.
A SWOT analysis is a strategic planning technique or framework for assessing an individual’s or an entity’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats .
It’s a highly relevant part of strategic planning within project management because it provides a competitive analysis to evaluate internal and external factors that can impact project success. In doing so, it helps project managers and leaders make data-driven decisions within their busines environment.
Here’s a breakdown of the four critical components of a SWOT analysis in project management:
By systematically examining these four elements, you can gain valuable insights to improve your planning, decision-making, and, ultimately, the chances of project success.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to conduct a SWOT analysis for project management:
Scope creep (an expansion of the project’s original scope) is one of the biggest contributors to project failures as it leads to budget overruns, disrupted workflows, and delayed timelines. So, before you begin with a SWOT analysis, clearly define the project scope and objectives.
Knowing your goals, deliverables, and target audience helps you ask the right questions during the SWOT analysis, leading to more relevant and actionable insights. Here’s an example.
Imagine you have to launch a marketing campaign in a new country. First, you’ll define the target demographic for the campaign, the expected reach, the budget, and more, as part of the project scope. This will lead you to analyze relevant strengths that could support the campaign, such as local networks or partnerships. Your weaknesses could be strict regulatory requirements around marketing your product in that country.
Once you define the project goals and deliverables, identify your strengths. To do this, you need to determine your business’s core competencies.
Ask questions like:
Ideally, you should conduct a brainstorming session with the project team beforehand to discuss what makes this project well-positioned for success. Consider past project wins and identify the strengths and critical factors that contributed to those successes. But don’t rely on that information alone. Conduct your own research and analysis.
The strengths of the project could look like this:
For example, Toyota’s core competency is manufacturing quality automobiles at the best prices. This distinct competency (which differentiates Toyota from its competitors) is the Toyota Production System (TPS), which employs a Lean Manufacturing System—eliminating waste and improving efficiency—to deliver high-quality cars at a reasonable price.
Understanding your shortcomings requires deep introspection into your resources and internal factors.
You can conduct team discussions to identify areas where the project might be vulnerable. Make sure to encourage open and honest feedback during these discussions. Another way to understand weaknesses is to analyze past project challenges and identify the fault lines that contributed to those issues. Benchmark the project against industry best practices to see where it could potentially fall short.
A company weakness could be anything from process inefficiencies to resource constraints. Once you identify the weaknesses, you can adjust for any potential problems early on or make plans with a realistic understanding of your capabilities.
The next step is to explore opportunities in the external environment. Here, you need to identify favorable factors that could benefit the project. You can consider market trends, technological advancements, and potential partnerships .
Techniques to uncover opportunities:
For example, an opportunity for a renewable energy project could be government incentives for clean energy initiatives.
When conducting a SWOT analysis for project management, identifying threats involves anticipating external factors that could negatively impact the project’s success. Here’s how a company can uncover these potential threats:
By proactively identifying these threats, you can develop contingency plans to mitigate their impact.
💡 Pro Tip: A good way to conduct a threat analysis is to monitor industry trends to stay informed about potential disruptions. A thorough competitor analysis can also tell you about future challenges, so remember to keep an eye on them.
Once you’ve collected all the important data, it’s time to create a SWOT matrix. Create a square and divide it into four quadrants, as shown below.
You can use the ClickUp Work SWOT Analysis Template to help you define your positioning based on the four aspects of the SWOT analysis. This template can help you:
Once you create the SWOT matrix, it’s time to analyze it. While there are multiple ways to analyze a SWOT matrix, the TOWS method is a great one. It builds on the SWOT framework—while matching threats with opportunities and weaknesses with strengths.
This approach flips the analysis to consider how:
Can a potential threat present a hidden opportunity?
Netflix is an excellent example of converting threats into opportunities. It initially started as a DVD rental company, sending DVDs to its customers via mail. However, rapidly changing technology, which led to the shrinking of the DVD business, was its biggest threat. Netflix capitalized on this opportunity and switched to video streaming. The rest, as they say, is history!
Laura Stack, a keynote speaker on productivity, recommends the TOP formula to convert threats into opportunities—Think, Open, and Push.
Thinking means shifting your perspective and seeing the problem as an opportunity for innovation . Open refers to being flexible and trying out all possible solutions and approaches. Lastly, you need to push or take action to achieve your goal.
Can a weakness be a stepping stone to an opportunity? For example, a lack of experience in a specific technology + the opportunity to acquire a company with that expertise = A strategic acquisition to enter a new market.
By dissecting your project plan this way, you can develop a comprehensive set of strategic options that maximize your project’s success.
Now that you’ve analyzed your SWOT matrix and identified key opportunities and threats, it’s time to translate insights into action—using the MoSCoW method. Here’s how:
While you can do it manually, using SWOT analysis software like ClickUp can make your job infinitely easier.
It is an all-in-one project management software that helps you set project objectives, define resources, create tasks, and monitor progress—all while ensuring seamless, transparent collaboration with your team.
Here’s how you can use ClickUp for SWOT analysis:
ClickUp Whiteboards facilitate real-time collaboration during your SWOT analysis. Team members can brainstorm ideas, discuss findings, and visually organize their thoughts and learning on a digital whiteboard. This helps your team think of creative solutions to leverage strengths and overcome weaknesses.
ClickUp Goals help you define objectives and key results (OKRs) related to your SWOT analysis. By setting measurable goals, you can track progress and ensure your project strategy aligns with the identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
ClickUp’s Custom Fields allow you to filter data and focus on specific information for SWOT analysis. You can use them to categorize and analyze information more effectively.
For example, you could create a custom field for “impact” to rate the severity of a weakness or the potential of an opportunity.
ClickUp Dashboards provide a clear visual representation of your project SWOT analysis through charts and graphs. This allows your team to monitor performance and identify areas that need immediate attention. Think of a chart showing the impact of each strength or weakness on project goals .
ClickUp Docs allows you to store the final SWOT analysis report along with supporting data and insights. Team members and project stakeholders can comment, edit, and share the doc as needed.
ClickUp offers pre-built SWOT analysis templates that provide a structured framework for you to analyze your project and drive innovation.
For instance, the Personal SWOT Analysis Template by ClickUp is the ultimate tool for analyzing your personal strengths and weaknesses. Use it to understand your professional competencies and pinpoint areas where you can improve.
This is a useful template for you and your team members to run through individually before planning a big project. Everyone comes to the table prepared with knowledge of the team’s skillsets.
For business use, you can try ClickUp’s Competitive Analysis Template . It’s an interactive whiteboard template where you can add ideas, notes, or visual elements in the four quadrants while building business strategies for new products or services.
The template helps you to collaboratively brainstorm with your team to build a knowledge base about your business competitors and market trends , and identify potential threats and opportunities.
In addition to templates, you can also use AI to run a preliminary SWOT analysis to get you started. Just add SWOT analysis prompts to ClickUp Brain , the AI integration, and get actionable insights.
For a successful project, your SWOT analysis should drive your strategic planning. Here’s how:
In the field of project management, the interplay between SWOT analysis and risk management is significant. Threats identified in the SWOT analysis serve as a foundation for risk management by highlighting potential risks, while weaknesses may also indicate internal risks that need addressing.
Risk assessment involves evaluating the impact and likelihood of threats and weaknesses identified in the SWOT analysis and prioritizing risks based on their potential impact on the project:
Here’s how the SWOT analysis helps decision-making in project management:
We all have our blind spots, and sometimes our analysis reflects that. Project failures due to poor communication and stakeholder management are common. To avoid subjectivity and bias, you need diverse perspectives in the room. The next time you do a SWOT analysis, gather people from different departments or consider an anonymous survey to gather unbiased input from the team.
Ever end up with a SWOT analysis that’s a mile long and an inch deep? That’s a sign of a lack of focus. Remember, the goal is to identify actionable insights specific to your project . Before you start brainstorming, lock down your project’s goals and objectives. This will keep your analysis laser-focused and relevant.
According to a recent PWC report , 73% of CEOs say technological disruption is a significant threat to their business. Sometimes, we get so caught up in our internal world (team dynamics, software limitations) that we forget the external landscape. External factors like market trends, competitor actions, and even economic forecasts can significantly impact your project. So, do your research and stay on top of what’s happening outside your team.
Thinking of SWOT analysis as a one-time thing is a recipe for disaster. The world is constantly changing, and your project environment is no different. Schedule regular reviews of your SWOT analysis to ensure it stays relevant. Think of it as a living document that adapts as your project progresses and external and internal factors evolve.
Okay, you’ve identified some great insights from your SWOT analysis. Now what? Don’t let those insights sit there—turn them into action! A SOAR (Strengths-Opportunities-Actions-Results) analysis can help you bridge the gap . By setting clear goals, timelines, and ownership for each action item, you can transform your SWOT analysis into a roadmap for project success.
A SWOT analysis is a powerful project management framework that provides a clear picture of your project. It indicates internal strengths and weaknesses, along with the internal and external factors, opportunities, and threats that can impact the success and outcomes of your project.
Understanding these factors helps you develop a focused strategy, mitigate risks, and make informed decisions throughout the project lifecycle.
Ready to improve your project management skills? ClickUp offers a robust suite of features to streamline your workflow and empower strategic decision-making, including project management templates, collaboration tools, and insightful dashboards.
Sign up for free on ClickUp today to turn your SWOT analysis into a roadmap for project success!
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Before we dive deep into the SWOT analysis, let’s get the business overview of Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin Corporation is a global aerospace, defense, and security company headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. It is one of the world’s largest defense contractors, providing various advanced technology systems, products, and services. Here’s an overview of Lockheed Martin’s business:
Lockheed Martin’s strong market presence, diverse product portfolio, and continuous innovation make it a pivotal player in the aerospace and defense industry, contributing significantly to national and global security.
A SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool to evaluate a business, project, or individual’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It involves identifying the internal and external factors that can affect a venture’s success or failure and analyzing them to develop a strategic plan. In this article, we do a SWOT Analysis of Lockheed Martin.
SWOT Analysis: Meaning, Importance, and Examples
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SWOT. Some of you may already be smiling when you read that, while others may be as confused as ever. Of course, it is understandable that some would be able to know while others would ask themselves what that means. You may have encountered this acronym before. You could even have associated it with business or even marketing . Any kind of business that you may do, you would always encounter the acronym SWOT. But what does this acronym even mean and why is it so important for people to take notice of? Why is it necessary to even know or use this to our advantage ?
In addition to that, when we hear the word marketing plan, we know that it may sound or look like an action plan or a business plan. Adding the terms SWOT analysis to the mix, we would get a glimpse of what this acronym stands for. Strength, Weakness, Objective, Threat. These are the key elements that make up the SWOT acronym. But how are they of use? Let’s check out these 4+ examples for a SWOT analysis marketing plan.
1. swot analysis marketing plan.
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A SWOT analysis marketing plan is a kind of marketing strategic plan that follows the method of analyzing the marketing procedure. This marketing plan gives a way to analyze in very careful detail of how you are going to be planning your strategies and if these strategies are enough or are possible enough to be done. We know that a marketing plan helps by giving you the right strategy to use for lesser risks and more opportunities. To add the SWOT method, it makes your marketing plan have a bigger success.
The main purpose of a SWOT analysis marketing plan is to lower down any risks that may affect the business . The SWOT analysis also helps make you see the strengths of your marketing plan, any weaknesses that need to be addressed, the opportunities that can be helpful and the threats that need to be addressed immediately before they get worse. When using the SWOT analysis method for your marketing plan, this gives you more of an edge as you are able to see where to go and what to do in case you encounter roadblocks.
Following the SWOT method, your SWOT analysis marketing plan would be in good hands. So this is why you need to know how to write the marketing plan as well. Here are your tips to get you from point a to point b.
Get to know the marketing strengths of your business. What does your business need and what can you do to get it done? List down the steps that you believe are your strengths. See to it that all the steps you write are doable. This would be where your strengths lie.
Just as you list down the strengths of your marketing plan, you should also write down the weaknesses. These weaknesses include the roadblocks, the issues, and the risks that may threaten your marketing strategy. These weaknesses do not necessarily mean that your marketing plan would be a failure, rather it is there to make sure that you have a solution or a way to make these weaknesses your strengths.
What are the opportunities that you can do to make your marketing strategy better? Ask yourself what you need and what the company or business needs to be better. Opportunities are everywhere, but you must also ask yourself first before writing them down. As not all opportunities are best for your business, and not all opportunities are really opportunities to help your business grow.
What better way than to be able to know the threats that may cause issues than to see them through the SWOT method? Addressing the threats means that you know there are going to be a lot of risks present when writing your marketing plan. This also means that you know what you are going to be doing, how to address them, and how to resolve any issues that can hurt or destroy your plan. With that being said, list all the threats and see to it that each threat has its own solution.
Last but not the least, from the SWOT method, you may begin writing your whole marketing plan. Being able to break down the SWOT analysis method helps you by putting together a better marketing plan complete with the details to help you find a good or better solution.
A SWOT method is defined as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This method helps by analyzing any potential of the four elements that make up the method.
By breaking it into four counterparts, you are able to check which belongs to the first category, second category, etc.
Apart from it telling you the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing plan, it also gives you the chance to see the opportunities that can make your marketing plan even better as well as to avoid any threats that may destroy your marketing and your business altogether.
Writing SWOT for your marketing plan helps a lot. It helps by breaking down your marketing plan and addressing the weaknesses and turning them into strengths. It helps by showing you the threats and to find opportunities to make them better.
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In her bid to challenge trump, kamala harris must rally a divided democratic coalition and confront pivotal issues: defending abortion rights, safeguarding democracy, countering the repercussions of project 2025, and opposing the extreme policies of maga republicans..
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The past month in the United States has been a whirlwind of unprecedented events, shaking the very foundations of our political landscape. An extraordinary presidential debate in June was quickly overshadowed by infighting among Democrats, casting a shadow over President Joe Biden's re-election prospects . The nation was then rocked by an assassination attempt on former President and current Republican nominee Donald Trump. Amidst this chaos, Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as the Democratic candidate following President Biden's decision to step aside.
In her bid to challenge Trump, Harris must rally a divided Democratic coalition and confront pivotal issues: defending abortion rights, safeguarding democracy, countering the repercussions of Project 2025, and opposing the extreme policies of MAGA Republicans.
Harris's diverse heritage, seasoned political acumen, and unwavering commitment to progressive ideals position her as a beacon of hope for a broad swath of the electorate. Yet, she faces a labyrinth of political hurdles and strategic opportunities that will define her path to victory in this crucial election.
Let’s embark on a comprehensive SWOT analysis of Kamala Harris's candidacy , exploring her strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as she navigates this historic campaign.
Formidable Experience and Credentials
Kamala Harris brings an impressive political pedigree, encompassing her roles as Vice President, US Senator, and California Attorney General. Her vast experience provides her with a profound grasp of both domestic and global issues. As Vice President, she has been instrumental in championing domestic policies and passing significant legislation, such as the Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, where she cast the decisive tie-breaking vote in the Senate. Her strategic involvement in the 2022 midterm elections, particularly on the issue of abortion, yielded remarkable results for Democrats. Harris's extensive foreign diplomacy further cements her readiness to assume the presidency.
Diverse and Inclusive Representation
Harris, as the first woman, first Black woman, and first South Asian American Vice President, embodies a mosaic of American diversity. This positions her as a unifying figure capable of mobilising a broad coalition of voters, including people of colour, religious minorities, and the LGBTQ+ community. The Democratic Party's "big tent" philosophy finds a powerful advocate in Harris, who must now weave together this diverse fabric, reminiscent of Obama's coalition in 2008. The nation’s long-held aspiration for a female president, bolstered by influential figures like Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley, underscores Harris's potential to galvanise suburban women in swing states and pose a formidable challenge to Trump.
Robust Policy Expertise
Harris's distinguished track record on critical issues such as criminal justice reform, healthcare, and climate change marks her as a progressive stalwart. Her advocacy for comprehensive women's healthcare, DEI initiatives, humane immigration policies, and aggressive climate action resonates deeply with the Democratic base. Her legislative acumen, honed as a Senator from California, equips her to present a compelling alternative to Trump and the contentious Project 2025.
Masterful Oratory and Debate Prowess
Harris’s rhetorical skills and sharp debating abilities are powerful assets in her campaign arsenal. Her dynamic performances against formidable opponents like Biden and Warren have demonstrated her capability to deliver impactful zingers and mobilise support. Over the past six years, her oratory has evolved, captivating audiences and energising the Democratic base eager for a robust contender to challenge Trump.
Public Perception and Favourability
Harris has grappled with criticism and fluctuating favourability ratings throughout her political career. Right-wing commentators have often distorted her image, creating misleading narratives. Overcoming these entrenched perceptions will be pivotal to her success in November.
Previous Campaign Shortcomings
Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign faltered, raising doubts about her ability to run a winning national campaign. However, the current political landscape demands a more assertive and strategic approach, ensuring that her campaign remains focused and resonant.
Biden Administration’s Baggage
While her tenure as Vice President is an asset, any perceived failures of the Biden administration could be weaponised against her. She must adeptly navigate these associations, particularly addressing immigration challenges, to distinguish her leadership.
Need for Detailed Policy Articulation
Critics assert that Harris must offer more precise and comprehensive policy proposals to broaden her appeal. While Project 2025 presents a stark contrast, she must consistently promote her own priorities and policies across all platforms, from speeches to social media.
Opportunities
Uniting the Democratic Factions
With Biden stepping aside, Harris has the unparalleled opportunity to unify the diverse elements of the Democratic Party—progressives, moderates, and minority groups. Securing an endorsement from key figures like Obama could solidify her position.
Emphasis on Critical Issues
By highlighting her commitment to abortion rights, democracy, and opposing MAGA extremism, Harris can rally voters deeply concerned about these pivotal issues. Persuading independents in swing states could be a game-changer, tapping into sentiments that Trump is not the GOP’s ideal candidate.
Countering Project 2025
Critiquing and offering robust alternatives to Project 2025 and other extreme Republican policies positions Harris as a stalwart defender of democracy and individual liberties. This is a potent area where Trump’s campaign is particularly vulnerable.
Harnessing Grassroots Momentum
Harris can leverage grassroots movements and organisations to build a formidable campaign infrastructure, drawing inspiration from the successful grassroots efforts of Clinton and Obama.
Capitalising on Demographic Shifts
The evolving demographics of the American electorate, marked by increasing diversity, could play to Harris’s advantage if she effectively engages these emerging voter segments. The recent conflict in Gaza underscores the need for nuanced outreach to diverse minority voters who could tip the electoral balance.
Trump's Resilient Base and Aggressive Tactics
Trump’s fervent support base and his combative campaign strategies pose a significant threat. Harris must be prepared to counter a barrage of misinformation and personal attacks. The failed assassination attempt has only heightened Trump’s messianic appeal among his followers, who will aggressively target Harris’s record and background.
Economic Volatility
Economic instability or inflation could be exploited by opponents to critique Democratic policies, impacting Harris’s campaign. Many Americans still recall better economic times under Trump. Harris must articulate a clear plan to address inflation and economic recovery.
Polarisation and Voter Suppression
The deeply polarised political environment and voter suppression efforts in key states could undermine voter turnout and election outcomes. Ensuring robust countermeasures against voter suppression and maximising turnout in swing states are critical.
Intense Media Scrutiny
The relentless media spotlight and potential negative coverage could shape public perception and erode support for Harris. Avoiding gaffes and viral missteps is paramount in an era of 24-hour news cycles and social media scrutiny.
Internal Party Fractures
Any significant discord within the Democratic Party could weaken Harris’s campaign by presenting a disunited front. She must demonstrate strong leadership and cohesion, reassuring voters that the party stands firmly behind her candidacy.
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Before we dive deep into the SWOT analysis, let's get the business overview of Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin Corporation is a global aerospace, defense, and security company headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. It is one of the world's largest defense contractors, providing various advanced technology systems, products, and services. Here's an overview of Lockheed Martin's
What Is a SWOT Analysis Marketing Plan? A SWOT analysis marketing plan is a kind of marketing strategic plan that follows the method of analyzing the marketing procedure. This marketing plan gives a way to analyze in very careful detail of how you are going to be planning your strategies and if these strategies are enough or are possible enough to be done.
The past month in the United States has been a whirlwind of unprecedented events, shaking the very foundations of our political landscape. An extraordinary presidential debate in June was quickly overshadowed by infighting among Democrats, casting a shadow over President Joe Biden's re-election prospects.The nation was then rocked by an assassination attempt on former President and current ...
This Business Strategy Bundle Package contains 4 different Excel documents to plan your business and your strategic planning process. One Page Strategic Plan design, SWOT Analysis, Organization Chart, and Financial Graphs are included.