SWOT Analysis: Your Basic Tool for Strategic Planning

Posted on Dec 29, 2022 at 09:12 PM

If you are a business manager, a well-established company, or an entrepreneur who creates his project, you have undoubtedly heard about SWOT analysis with the infinite number of difficult decisions you have encountered.

You may have ventured instead of planning and studying risks or conceded an opportunity that would have changed the organisation's future.

You must take strategic steps instead of acting spontaneously when making such an important step.

In this article, you will learn about the first tool to analyse your company's position and how to use it to make the best decision, whatever the challenges.

What is SWOT Quad Analysis?

SWOT analysis is one of the most effective analytical tools for evaluating a company's competitive position in the entrepreneurial world. SWOT analysis assesses strengths and weaknesses (internal analysis), opportunities, and threats (external examination) that companies face in making their own decisions.

SWOT's analytical analysis facilitates a realistic and unbiased view of strategic business positions, where objective facts and data can be viewed within this framework, and decision-making is optimised in all situations.

Some essential ideas for SWOT analysis:

Before you start dropping SWOT analysis criteria on the challenges and difficulties you face in your business system, you need to surround some vital information about it, which we summarised in four points.

• SWOT analysis is a strategic planning method used as a data assessment tool.
• SWOT analysis is based on objective facts and the formation of new views and ideas based on those facts.
• SWOT analysis shows internal points of strength and weakness and external forces that influence decisions but cannot be controlled (opportunities and threats).
• The SWOT framework works optimally when its data are objective and unbiased. This can be achieved by providing it with differing views and opinions rather than committing to a single view of decisions.

What are the elements of SWOT's strategic analysis?

SWOT analysis or SWOT matrix, or quadruple analysis is used in several areas and is short for four words:

• Strengths: characteristics or data of a company that gives it preference over all competitors.
• Weaknesses: These are the company's difficulties, such as excessive debt, a small number of employees, a need for training, or inexperience that makes success more difficult.
• Opportunities: External conditions whose investment increases profits and productivity.
• Threats: are the challenges and risks the company has to face to gain a better position in the competitive job market and external factors that can jeopardise the company's success.

Internal and external factors in SWOT analysis:

Strengths and weaknesses refer to internal factors in SWOT analysis, which are the resources and expertise readily available to the company. At the same time, threats and opportunities are external factors outside the company's authority. These two concepts intersect with the SWOT analysis strategy or strategic compatibility, which can be seen as a tool for the balanced scorecard approach.

Some internal factors that are common in swot analysis:

• Financial resources: including domestic finance, sources of income, and investment opportunities.
• Physical resources: such as location, facilities, and equipment.
• Human resources: staff, volunteers, and target audiences.

While these are some external factors such as opportunities and common threats in SWOT analysis:

• Market trends include new products, technological advances, and public needs shifts.
• Economic trends: domestic, national, and international financial movements.
• External funding: voluntary contributions, legislative bodies, and other sources.
• Relationships with suppliers and partners.

A SWOT analysis determines which factors can be classified as strengths and weaknesses and how to use those four elements to optimise the situation.

How to perform a SWOT analysis

SWOT analysis helps understand and analyse the expectations of both team and customers. Many team members can contribute to assessing situations, making competitive analyses, developing a business plan, and using SWAT SWOT analysis as the best way of working.

A group of people best does SWOT analysis with different perspectives and locations in the company to ensure the most complete and objective results. Management, marketing, sales, customer service, and even customers themselves can participate in designing SWOT analysis, transforming SWOT analysis into an opportunity to bring team members together and encourage them to participate and adhere to the strategy they all participated in creating.

SWOT analysis is usually performed using the SWOT quadruple analysis template, this template contains four boxes, each dedicated to one of the elements, but unique lists can be created for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges.

The analysis process begins by asking participants questions. These questions help to accurately describe strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, including:

Strengths (positive internal factors):

• What internal resources do you have?
• What are the tools for obtaining those resources?
• What is your team's skill level?
• What tools is the team good at using?
• What aids improve work?
• Do you have strong R&D capabilities?
• What other positive aspects add value or offer you a competitive advantage?

Weaknesses (negative internal factors):

• What factors within your control detract from your ability to gain or maintain a competitive advantage?
• What areas do you need to improve to achieve your goals or compete with your strongest competitor?
• What is your business needing (e.g., experience, access to skills or technology)?
• Does your business have limited resources?
• What can you use to improve your competitive corporate and corporate location?

Opportunities (positive external factors)

• What opportunities in the market or environment can you take advantage of?
• Do you have a positive perception of your work?
• Have there been market-scale growth at the moment, or have there been other market changes that create an opportunity?
• What methods of development do these opportunities keep pace with?

Challenges (negative external factors):

• Who are your current or potential competitors?
• What factors beyond your control may jeopardise your business?
• Are there challenges resulting from an unfavourable trend or development that could lead to a decline in revenue or profits?

Create a list with answers to both strengths and weaknesses questions within each box and efficiently to ensure your analysis model is ready to use. Or you can learn more about SWOT analysis through the Strategic Planning training course in Istanbul.

To sum up, SWOT analysis is one of the best strategic tools. It helps to know and analyse the situation and determines the best way to deal with it. Swot analysis is a user-friendly tool through which all the data can be used to get the best result.