STRATEGICMANAGEMENT:SWOT ANALYSIS FORBUSINESS

An Academic presentation by Dr. Nancy Agnes, Head, Technical Operations, Tutors India Group  www.tutorsindia.comEmail: info@tutorsindia.com

Introduction

Components of SWOT

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats

Conclusion

OUTLINE

Today's Discussion

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis is a tool thatfacilitates organizational managers to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses,opportunities and threats that might exist in any kind of business.

Conducting a SWOT analysis could prove to be very instrumental in helping theorganization to acquire in-depth insights into the past and conjure potential solutionsto current or potential challenges.

This SWOT analysis can be carried out for an organization that is already existingwithin the market or for an organization that intends to make an entry into the marketin the near future (Gürel, 2017).

INTRODUCTION

In particular, SWOT comes across as a model that is very fundamental andtransparent that can evaluate what a business is capable of doing or incapable ofdoing, along with the possible opportunities and threats.

The SWOT analysis technique is to consider the information generated through anenvironmental evaluation and segregate it to internal (strengths and weaknesses)and external issues (opportunities and threats).

Following the completion of this activity, the SWOT analysis would determine whatwould aid the organization in realizing their objectives, and the kind of challengesthat need to be overcome or reduced in order to realize the intended outcomes(Namugenyi et al., 2019).

A large number of organizations execute a SWOT analysis during the stage of theirstrategic planning and they attempt to identify and scrutinize the prevalent resources,both externally as well as internally, examining their patterns and trends that mightresult in either positive or negative business outcomes.

The objective of this paper is to familiarize you with the components of SWOT andtips to conduct a SWOT analysis

The actual process of SWOT analysis would comprise of splitting four areas into twodimensions.

The four components of SWOT as mentioned above is Strength, Weakness,Opportunities and Threats.

Strengths and weaknesses can be deemed as factors that are internal and alsomake up the organizational attributes while, opportunities and threats would befactors that are external and are usually the environmental attributes (Gürel, 2017).

COMPONENTSOF SWOT

This, as you would know makes up the first component of the SWOT.

This component would take into account aspects of your organization that is doingparticularly well. It need not be anything tangible or definite.

The strength of your organization could also be something that is intangible such asthe brand image of an organization or something which can be very easily definedsuch as the organization’s unique selling proposition (USP) of a specific line ofproducts (Shewan, 2019).

STRENGTHS

In other cases, it could also be the human resources of the organization; robustleadership or a highly effective research and development team.

Thus you identify the strength of your organization.

Following the identification of the organization’sstrengths, the next step would be to be critical aboutoneself and identify and list out anything that youthink would be the weakness of your organization.

Weakness does not refer to physical weaknesshere but rather it refers to aspects of theorganization that is pulling your organization back.

Weaknesses could be anything such as financialconstraints, lack of skilled personnel, superior brandimage of competitor etc.

WEAKNESSES

Akin to strengths, weaknesses also are an innate aspect of your organization.

Therefore, it would help if you focus on resources, procedures, systems andpeople.

Consider aspects that you needs improvement and the kind of practices thatyou need to curb (Wang et al., 2014).

Opportunities would refer to chances of somethinggood or positive happening.

However, it would not happen on its own, you needto identify the opportunity and seize it.

Opportunities would generally tend to emerge fromsituations that exist beyond your organization, and itrequires foresight on your part as to what mighthappen in future.

Market or technology developments can be one(Brad & Brad, 2015).

OPPORTUNITIES

For instance, in case there is a surge in demand for a niche product that yourorganization can produce, that is an opportunity you can leverage.

But as mentioned, you need to be able to identify opportunities and harness itsuch that it makes a difference to your organization.

Lastly, the component of threat would comprise of anything that has thepropensity to make a negative impact on your business externally.

These would include; problems within the supply-chain, manpower shortage orchanges in market demands etc.

It is very necessary that you anticipate threats and initiate appropriate action tonegate the threat before it impacts you and causes a loss to your business orthwarts your growth (Sarbah & Otu-Nyarko, 2014).

THREATS

To identify threats, it might help if you try to list out the bottlenecks to yourbusiness such as delivering your finished goods to the market, drop in quality ofyour products amongst others.

Further, you should always keep yourself abreast of the activities that are beingcarried out by your competitors and modify your strategy to tackle that threat.

Also there is the threat of new governmental or trade policies so, you need toanticipate such threats to stay ahead of the competition and ensure success.

SWOT analysis is a tool that is being utilized withinthe domain of strategic management for the past fivedecades.

It has turned out to be a highly treasured tool as far asplanning and decision-making is concerned.

While there are a number of tools for analysis thathave been utilized during the strategic managementprocess, over the years a technique that has beenextensively used is SWOT analysis.

CONCLUSION

The use of SWOT helps in evaluating the external as well as the internalenvironment of the organization and thereby lends support to situations wherestrategic decisions are required.

This technique can be applied in several areas that require strategic analysis foran industry, a product, an organization, a city, a project or even an individual.

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