SWOT Analysis. Definitions of SWOT profiling, SWOT intelligence analysis, SWOT tools, matrix, templates and utilities.
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis. SWOT analysis definitions, descriptions, SWOT templates, examples and explanations. SWOT profiling & analysis in market & competitive intelligence. Tools and utilities in support of final SWOT analysis. Winword templates, screen shots, PowerPoint slides and word files.
A standard marketing tool for market and especially company profiling and intelligence, SWOT analysis has proven extremely effective as a quick yet substantial tool to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of companies, markets and products or services in any given market place.
Market & competitive intelligence knows and uses SWOT analysis as a standard analysis instrument and base of major decisions even before utilizing other analysis methods as this analysis or profiling might provide a very early indication of which further intelligence analysis tools to derive in general and for further analysis steps.
What is SWOT analysis?
SWOT definition by Vernon Prior (The Language of Business Intelligence): “SWOT analysis is the evaluation of available Information concerning the Business environment in order to identify internal strengths and weaknesses, and external Threats and Opportunities.
SWOT analysis is also known as Situational analysis and, when applied to competitors, as Competitor profiling.”
SWOT analysis is otherwise also defined as a structured approach to evaluating the strategic position of a business by identifying its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Objective
SWOT goals should be to identify a company’s strengths that the company can use to make use of opportunities in the operating environment and to become aware of that company’s or product’s weaknesses and what threats to the operations can be found in the market and competitive environment.
Internal analysis and external company analysis should be applied and synthesized in order to achieve these analysis objectives.
Methods
In order to analyze strengths, weaknesses (SW analysis) of any company or organization (or product or service) and opportunities and threats (OW analysis) in the given business environment, a matrix should be used to evaluate and illustrate all findings. The following questions should be asked (and answered) to extract important SWOT identifiers:
What are the main things that you think the company or product is better in than any given competitor?
What are the main things that you think the analyzed company is worse in than any given competitor?
What are the really big threats facing the analyzed company in the analyzed environment?
What are the major opportunities that are being presented to the analyzed company?
Oftentimes SWOT analysis is conducted by profiling the own organization or product or service against any other, reversely the questions should be re-phrased in this case:
What are the main things that you think your company is better in than your competitors?
What are the main things that you think your company is worse in than your competitors?
What are the really big threats facing your company in the environment?
What are the major opportunities that are being presented to your company?
SWOT Matrix Examples
The SWOT matrix is an easy to use and to present analysis tool.
STRENGTHS High quality High profitability … | WEAKNESSES Long delivery times Poor flexibility … |
OPPORTUNITIES Accelerating market growth Government subsidies … | THREATS New entrants to the industry Risk of economic downturn … |
SW Examples (strengths, weaknesses matrix).
Factor | Performance | Importance |
High quality | Major strength | High |
High profitability | Neutral | Medium |
Timely delivery | Minor weakness | Low |
Flexibility | Major weakness | High |
While the Opportunity matrix should include an axis to scale Probability and another one for Attractiveness, the Threat matrix should feature an axis to scale the Probability of occurrence and the Seriousness of the threat in question.
Download the free Winword template - SWOT analysis matrix
SWOT Analysis Example Coca-Cola (Coke) 3Q 2005
SWOT Analysis with SWOT templates download
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More Business Intelligence and Market Research Tools and Templates
Use these matrixes together with your colleagues and brainstorm the input. Play with various models and theories in order to see how the SWOT analysis impacts your decision making. Once established as a standard analysis tool, this SWOT analysis could be combined with the P.E.S.T. analysis or the Porter’s Five Forces model.
As a word of caution, SWOT analysis can be quite subjective depending on the case and view point plus individuals involved in the SWOT analysis conducted. Do not rely on your SWOT analysis too much. A couple of people rarely come-up with the same final SWOT. So use SWOT just as guide and to detect major indicators and do not use it as a prescription or rule.
Once major issues have been identified with your SWOT analysis, they feed into the marketing goals and objectives. SWOT analysis can be used in conjunction with other tools for audit and analysis (as mentioned above), such as a PEST analysis or Porter’s Five-Forces analysis. So, SWOT anyliss are very popular tools with makreting students because they are quick and easy to learn. During the SWOT anaylsis exercises, list factors in the relevant boxes (seen above). It should be quite simple.
Author: Jens Thieme
