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Strategic Management: SWOT Analysis for

Business

Dr. Nancy Agnes, Head, Technical Operations, Tutorsindia info@ tutorsindia.com

I. INTRODUCTION

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses,

Opportunities and Threats) analysis is a tool that

facilitates 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 the organization to acquire in-depth

insights into the past and conjure potential solutions

to current or potential challenges. This SWOT

analysis can be carried out for an organization that is

already existing within the market or for an

organization that intends to make an entry into the

market in the near future (Gürel, 2017). In particular,

SWOT comes across as a model that is very

fundamental and transparent that can evaluate what a

business is capable of doing or incapable of doing,

along with the possible opportunities and threats. The

SWOT analysis technique is to consider the

information generated through an environmental

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 what would aid the

organization in realizing their objectives, and the kind

of challenges that 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 their strategic

planning and they attempt to identify and scrutinize

the prevalent resources, both externally as well as

internally, examining their patterns and trends that

might result in either positive or negative business

outcomes.

The objective of this paper is to familiarize

you with the components of SWOT and tips to

conduct a SWOT analysis

II. COMPONENTS OF SWOT

The actual process of SWOT analysis would

comprise of splitting four areas into two dimensions.

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 also make up the organizational

attributes while, opportunities and threats would be

factors that are external and are usually the

environmental attributes (Gürel, 2017).

III. STRENGTHS

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

doing particularly well. It need not be anything

tangible or definite. The strength of your organization

could also be something that is intangible such as the

brand image of an organization or something which

can be very easily defined such as the organization’s

unique selling proposition (USP) of a specific line of

products (Shewan, 2019). In other cases, it could also

be the human resources of the organization; robust

leadership or a highly effective research and

development team. Thus you identify the strength of

your organization.

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IV. WEAKNESSES

Following the identification of the

organization’s strengths, the next step would be to be

critical about oneself and identify and list out

anything that you think would be the weakness of

your organization. Weakness does not refer to

physical weakness here but rather it refers to aspects

of the organization that is pulling your organization

back. Weaknesses could be anything such as financial

constraints, lack of skilled personnel, superior brand

image of competitor etc. Akin to strengths,

weaknesses also are an innate aspect of your

organization. Therefore, it would help if you focus on

resources, procedures, systems and people. Consider

aspects that you needs improvement and the kind of

practices that you need to curb (Wang et al., 2014).

V. OPPORTUNITIES

Opportunities would refer to chances of

something good or positive happening. However, it

would not happen on its own, you need to identify the

opportunity and seize it. Opportunities would

generally tend to emerge from situations that exist

beyond your organization, and it requires foresight on

your part as to what might happen in future. Market

or technology developments can be one (Brad &

Brad, 2015). For instance, in case there is a surge in

demand for a niche product that your organization

can produce, that is an opportunity you can leverage.

But as mentioned, you need to be able to identify

opportunities and harness it such that it makes a

difference to your organization.

VI. THREATS

Lastly, the component of threat would

comprise of anything that has the propensity to make

a negative impact on your business externally. These

would include; problems within the supply-chain,

manpower shortage or changes in market demands

etc. It is very necessary that you anticipate threats and

initiate appropriate action to negate the threat before

it impacts you and causes a loss to your business or

thwarts your growth (Sarbah & Otu-Nyarko, 2014).

To identify threats, it might help if you try to list out

the bottlenecks to your business such as delivering

your finished goods to the market, drop in quality of

your products amongst others. Further, you should

always keep yourself abreast of the activities that are

being carried 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 to anticipate such threats to stay ahead of the

competition and ensure success.

VII. CONCLUSION

SWOT analysis is a tool that is being

utilized within the domain of strategic management

for the past five decades. It has turned out to be a

highly treasured tool as far as planning and decision-

making is concerned. While there are a number of

tools for analysis that have been utilized during the

strategic management process, over the years a

technique that has been extensively used is SWOT

analysis. The use of SWOT helps in evaluating the

external as well as the internal environment of the

organization and thereby lends support to situations

where strategic decisions are required. This technique

can be applied in several areas that require strategic

analysis for an industry, a product, an organization, a

city, a project or even an individual.

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REFERENCES

Brad, S. & Brad, E. (2015). Enhancing SWOT

Analysis with TRIZ-based Tools to Integrate

Systematic Innovation in Early Task Design.

Procedia Engineering. [Online]. 131. pp. 616–

625. Available from:

https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S18

77705815043477.

Gürel, E. (2017). Swot Analysis: A Theoretical

Review. Journal of International Social

Research. [Online]. 10 (51). pp. 994–1006.

Available from:

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6iksisat_kamu_isletme/gurel_emet.pdf.

Namugenyi, C., Nimmagadda, S.L. & Reiners, T.

(2019). Design of a SWOT Analysis Model and

its Evaluation in Diverse Digital Business

Ecosystem Contexts. Procedia Computer

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Available from:

https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S18

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Sarbah, A. & Otu-Nyarko, D. (2014). An Overview

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Available from:

http://www.scirp.org/journal/doi.aspx?DOI=10.

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Shewan, D. (2019). How to do a SWOT analysis for

your small business (with Examples). Retrieved

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Wang, X.P., Zhang, J. & Yang, T. (2014). Hybrid

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Formulation in China Worldwide Express Mail

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