The Ultimate Guide to SWOT Analysis for Business and Why It Matters

In order to run a business and opting to stay true to the end goals, the business analysts have to continually look into various processes and a number of other things too. It can be arranging a weekly meeting with the employees or board of directors to take care of a few substantial things, making new policies, customizing the current one, or doing anything they can to further ease of operations and better communication among the team members.

There are literally a lot of different ways using which the progress of a business can be monitored or validated but how the business analysts want to do it is by engaging with the SWOT analysis, according to these professionals the SWOT analysis is the most effective method for the sake of analyzing the current feasibility of a business;

What is the SWOT analysis?

SWOT analysis in its most descriptive and general terms is a planning technique that is used to perform a lot of things and take care of a lot of inner operations of a business by deterring various key values about the business. These key values can be businesses' strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that it can come about facing or is doing so at the present. The most obvious purpose for performing a SWOT analysis to help the organization in their pursuit of overcoming the current challenges and at the same time deciding what new leads they can pursue to be able to achieve that.

The first SWOT analysis was done in 1960 by Albert Humphrey at the Stanford research institute for finding out why corporate plans fail. Ever since it made its way up to the surface it has been reviewed as the most awarding and the most recurrent tool used by the professionals to determine and speed up the growth of the business.

Read More: How to Launch My Career as a Business Analyst: Tips From Professionals

Elaborative process for SWOT analysis

SWOT analysis as explained earlier consists of four dedicated components such as Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. These can both be internal or external depending on the circumstances and can reflect not only the current ones but a few from the past as well. Considering both the internal and external possibilities is important for the overall success of the business and here is a brief summary for the SWOT analysis such as how it can be conducted in a successful way and what are the main ideas that you must never leave the sight of;

Strengths

In SWOT analysis strengths are subjected as the attributes that are necessary for the success of a particular project or a current objective that will ultimately play a vital role in the overall success of a business. But it is a timely succession and would take a lot of patience and perfect execution of the job roles by the employees that automatically adds up as the ultimate strength of the business. It can also be comprised of all the dedicated resources can capabilities that can be used at a competitive advantage.                   

A few examples of the business strength might include;

• Great company reputation
• Strong social media presence
• Extremely skilled staff with appropriate knowledge of what they are doing
• Such excessive qualities that can make your business stand out from the competition

Weaknesses

Weaknesses are subjected to any single or group of factors or logics that can hurt the current progress of an ongoing operation or a project. These can be due to miscommunication related hurdles, employees not having enough skills, or the whole business taking a toll and not being able to focus on all of their immediate goals. If you want to be better, do better, and be able to beat your competitors then you really do need to emerge from all these weaknesses, and using the immediate logic of the event turn them to your advantage.

A few examples of what weaknesses of a business are and how they look like can be as follows;

• Lack of appropriate finding
• Communication-related barriers between various sections of the company
• Rivalry in between cross departments
• Unclear or fogy unique selling proposition

Opportunities

Opportunities can be subjected as those outer or inner elements that are presented at variable times either to the management, employees, or other sections of the company that can help the company in achieving the goals of a dedicated project, to begin with. These might come around in the form of developments within the market that you are in or by having a new technological launch that can affirmatively help you to be better and providing you with a unique transition regarding smooth sailing for your operations.

If you want the success for your business to be long-term and want to have a bright and endearing future for your company then make sure that you are susceptible to better interact with these opportunities and grasp them as soon as this land or are presented to you. A few examples of what opportunities can be for your business can be found as follows;

• Having vast or goal-oriented media coverage for your company
• Emerging the needs for products and services and building a great clientele around it
• Having few competitors on the market
• Overflowing leads and being able to level up with them

Threats

Threats can be subjected to as imminent and unwanted elements that can render the success and growth of a business confused and derailed. These are like a potential risk that lingers over both the immediate and long term goals for the businesses and thus preventing them from achieving these goals in the long term. Threats at their earliest stage can’t be subjected as some immediate loss or wreckage for the business but caving into the snowball effect if these are not tended to rather vigilantly and are constantly ignored then these can definitely transform into a much brighter and serious problem.

Some examples of threats to a practical business might include;

• The negative public image of the brand/business
• Cheaper and better products and services
• Consistently fluctuating quality of these products and the services
• Changes in laws and regulations
• Lack of vendors for supplying raw materials
• Not being able to have a fair working policy for the employees/employees making unions

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How to perform a SWOT analysis for your business?

SWOT analysis can be best executed or conducted by a group of people that have different roles and approaches within the company. It is also good if they have different perspectives and stakes within the business, to begin with. Anyone is welcome to provide their insight about what is best for the business and in what direction the lead management must divert to. Upper management, customer services, sales, and even the customers at times can provide their valuable insight about the SWOT analysis for a particular company or business.

The Strengths and the weaknesses have to be monitored, assessed, or reported internally while on the other hand the opportunities and threats can be assessed as the external factors.

The SWOT analysis matrix

Technically the most correct and endearing way of conducting the SWOT analysis is to use a matrix oriented approach in which a four-square SWOT analysis template is used, each and every compartment in there directly to a practical component of the SWOT analysis such as weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, and threats to begin with. As it not only makes it convenient to have a quick glance at each and every point but also the relative information would also get recorded and assessed into practical categories to avoid the mixing or any other form of confusion, to begin with.

But if you don’t intend to use the SWOT analysis matrix then you can simply make a list and start enlisting points for each and every component separately. The best method has to be the matrix approach as this way you can rather easily organize and understand the results of the analysis, to begin with. There are various steps that you can take or implement for the sake of conducting a SWOT analysis but if you are looking for a definite pattern or some sort of standard to do so then there isn't one. Every company or business conducts SWOT analysis on its own and using its own set of tables and or steps.

Following is a detailed inclination of various steps that can be used for the sake of performing SWOT analysis for your business or company;

1. Identifying the strengths

At first, you have to look at the bright side or the positive aspects that can come out of your business or company. Strengths are the most internal aspect of any company or business and these are within your call too. The first step is all about deterring your possible assets and the things that you are good at. Instead of rolling out with negativity and assessing your weaknesses and threats which would eventually bring the morale down the SWOT analysis begin with the identification of your dedicated strengths.

Following are some of the questions to ask yourself in this regard;

• Why do the customers stay with your brand/business?
• What is it that your business does so well?
• What is the unique selling proposition that you have for setting you apart from your competitors?

2. Evaluating your weaknesses

Weakness must also be recorded, assessed, and analyzed as an internal business element that might leave you vulnerable out there and hurt your competitive advantages. It is never great to dwell on your weaknesses but for the most part, it is not that great either to know what your weaknesses are and then doing nothing to change or adapt to better circumstances. Conducting the SWOT analysis you must look out for each and every possibility according to which you are running into some bad business element and record it as a weakness. Are your operations being halted? Is there no communication between cross platforms within your organization? All of these are account for weaknesses.

Other than that following might check out as possible weaknesses of a business;

• In which areas does your business struggle?
• Why do customers select your competitors over your business?
• What stops you from performing your absolute best?

3. Looking out for new opportunities

This is the step that requires an extensive and overhauling amount of research in order to dig up any fraction of light that can be found within the tunnel. Bring into account your strengths and weaknesses and then devise a thorough plan that can help you with your current situation and derive more customers towards your side if it is a goal that you are looking forward to fulfilling.

On the other hand, if you have some other long-term goals then you have the liberty to think outside of the box and bring on the table any possible thing, event, tool, or strategy that is good for the business. Once again this step can be time focused on the immediate goals of the organization or regarding the long-term goals that you may want to achieve.

4. Identify threats

The most difficult and focus oriented task of a SWOT analysis to determine the possible organizational threats that exist within your business and are hurting your business ventures dearly. You would have to come up with a list of the potential threats because at the end of the day you can’t simply know what hit you and what should be your reaction to it. It might instill you with some on-deck anxiety, nervousness, and possibly fear when having to list or account for such threats. But as you can see it is an important and endeavor and you have to simply roll with it, otherwise the threats at the moment might turn into bigger problems in the future.

You need to be honest in your pursuit of fading and listing these threats, list all such threats even if you think that these are minor or otherwise negligible. It is always a great idea to have such intangible threats always on your radar as this way if in the upcoming future it decides to sprout into a problem you will already have an actionable plan constructed around containing that particular threat.

5. Developing some actionable strategies

Once you have allocated all sections of a SWOT analysis into a single array and have filled each and every section with the particular information that is required you can get ready to develop actionable strategies around it in the form of a TWOS analysis. TWOS analysis can be taken as an extension of the SWOT analysis that can actually help in matching up your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in such a way that some actionable strategy can come out of it or it can be fairly predicted using this method. The strengths and weaknesses are in the horizontal column while opportunities and threats are placed within the same row. 

The weaknesses and threats are taken as negative while on the other hand the strengths and opportunities are taken as positive attributes of the TWOS analysis, to begin with. It might seem a little daunting or overhauling to begin with this type of analysis if you have just finished with the SWOT analyses but it is a necessary evil. If you don’t begin with the TWOS analysis then why did you even bother doing the SWOT analysis in the first place, the SWOT analysis only provides with things that can be done or are there but it is the TWOS analysis that can fill you in regarding the actionable insight or strategies that you must be building for the sake of transitioning your company.

So, whatever you do just make sure that you see this thing through otherwise there is no use of going with either of it.

SWOT analysis for the business analysts

A business analyst must know about the working knowledge of the SWOT analysis, what does it do? How to perform it and other relative information about this analysis as well. A business analyst once getting around the working of the SWOT analysis and how it can be best utilized can use it in a number of ways such as;

• To check the viability of a proposed or a strategic solution
• For the identification of new opportunities as these are proposed or emerge for a particular sector or section
• Finding better alternatives to an existing solution
• Analyzing a system that is undergoing change
• Studying and researching the business competition

These are some of the things that you will get to learn and take away from the SWOT analysis, other than that sometime in the future you must also be able to refine the technique and thus purify the results or insights that it brings on the table.       

If you feel yourself a little intrigued with the SWOT analysis and other related attributes of the data analytics and want to develop a career around it then do consider data analytics certification as these can help you to receive all the knowledge that you require for the sake of building a sound foundation of your career.