How SWOT Analysis could help any Organization in achieving their objectives.

Today most organizations engage in strategic planning. Strategic planning is a way to help an organization be more productive by helping guide the allocation of resources in order to achieve goals. Strategic management consists of the analysis, decisions, and actions an organization undertakes in order to create and sustain competitive advantages. It is a strategic management tool. 

The main phase of the strategic management process is external and internal analysis, also called SWOT Analysis.

What is a SWOT analysis?

S.W.O.T. is an acronym that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT analysis is an organized list of your business’s greatest strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Strengths and weaknesses are internal to the company (reputation, patents, location). You can change them over time but not without some work. Opportunities and threats are external (suppliers, competitors, prices), they are out there in the market, happening whether you like it or not. You can’t change them.

Strengths and opportunities are helpful to achieve the organizational objectives. They are favorable for organizations. Weaknesses and threats are harmful to achieving the organizational objectives. They are unfavorable for organizations.

Strengths (internal, positive factors)

Strength is something an organization is good at doing. It’s internal to your organization. They are within your control.

• What do you do well?
• What internal resources do you have? (Positive attributes of people, such as knowledge, background, education, credentials, network, reputation, or skills)
• Assets of the company, such as capital, credit, existing customers or distribution channels, patents, or technology
• What advantages do you have over your competition

Weaknesses (internal, negative factors)

Weaknesses are also within the organization’s control, but the category includes everything that keeps the business from staying on track to achieving business or project goals and objectives. These are the things that need to be fixed or changed in order to achieve success.

• What areas need improvement to accomplish your objectives or compete with your strongest competitor?
• What does your business lack (for example, expertise or access to skills or technology)?
• Does your business have limited resources?
• Is your business in a poor location?

Opportunities (external, positive factors)

Opportunities and threats are part of the external environment. It includes factors that impact the objective or project from outside the company.

• What opportunities exist in your market or the environment that you can benefit from?
• Is the perception of your business positive?
• Has there been recent market growth or have there been other changes in the market to create an opportunity?
• Is the opportunity ongoing, or is there just a window for it? In other words, how critical is your timing?

Threats (external, negative factors)

Threats include anything in the external environment that might cause issues for a project or that pose a future threat to the organization’s success. You have no control over these, but you may benefit by having contingency plans to address them if they should occur.

• Who are your existing or potential competitors?
• What factors beyond your control could place your business at risk?
• What situations might threaten your marketing efforts?
• Has a new product or technology been introduced that makes your products, equipment, or services obsolete?

Possible Organizational Strengths and Weaknesses:

Brand Names, Advertising, Cost, Customer loyalty, Decision Making, Financial resources, Marketing, Leadership, Management, Product Quality and Differentiation, Selling etc.

Possible Organizational: Opportunities and Threats:

Industry forces, Competitive changes, Supplier changes, economic changes etc.

SWOT analysis examples

SWOT analyses from major corporations can help you get an idea of how the process works. Strategic Management Insight offers examples of SWOT analyses for a wide range of companies, including Google, Starbucks and Amazon. 

SWOT Analysis is more than an exercise in making four lists. SWOT Analysis, reveals an organization’s current situation and makes it possible to develop future action plans for the organization. If the technique is used properly, it can provide a good basis for strategy formulation.

Thank you!!

 Reference & Authors: Tim Berry  & Emet GUREL

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