SWOT analysis for Small Businesses is important A SWOT analysis could help you and your small business operates in smart, informed or cost saving business decisions. Understanding your company’s position within your market or industry and knowing how and where you can grow is critical for any small business owner. Strategically develop your company rather than wasting your efforts trying to expand into a market that doesn’t align with your business or being overrun by surprise competitor. What is SWOT Analysis? SWOT – which stands for ''strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats'' – is a type of analysis that helps you develop your business strategy by comparing internal factors (strengths and weaknesses) against external factors (opportunities and threats). A SWOT analysis has four quadrants: STRENGTHS Strengths are internal, positive attributes of your company. These are things that are within your control. (Internal company factors) WEAKNESSES Weaknesses are negative factors that detract from your strengths. These are things that you might need to improve on to be competitive. (Internal company factors) OPPORTUNITIES Opportunities are external factors in your business environment that are likely to contribute to your success. (Factors external to the company) THREATS Threats are external factors that you have no control over. You may want to consider putting in place contingency plans for dealing them if they occur. (Factors external to the company) A SWOT analysis is a good tool for general business strategizing and serves as a starting point for team discussions. When conducted thoroughly, a SWOT analysis can uncover a much more information and can be useful in a number of situations for improvement of your company. Let’s breakdown the SWOT Analysis Process. We know that SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats – Let’s take a look at each element individually, each of the quadrants has few examples on how to established each of the quadrants. S Strengths W Weakness O Opportunities T Threats What do your business do well? What assets do you have in your team, such as knowledge, education, network, skills, and reputation? What physical assets do you have, such as customers, equipment, technology, cash, and patents? What do you do better than your competitors? In what areas do you need to improve? What business processes need improvement? Are there tangible assets that your company needs, such as money or equipment? Are there gaps on your team? Is your location ideal for your success? What are the business goals you are currently working towards? Are there upcoming changes to regulations that might impact your company positively? Is your market growing and are there trends that will encourage people to buy more of what you are selling? Are there upcoming events that your company may be able to take advantage of to grow the business? If your business is up and running, do customers think highly of you? Do you have potential competitors who may enter your market? What are your competitors doing that you're not? Will suppliers always be able to supply the raw materials you need at the prices you need? Could future developments in technology change how you do business? Is consumer behaviour changing in a way that could negatively impact your business? Are there market trends that could become a threat? One of the most important parts of your SWOT analysis is using it to identify new strategies and goals for your business. For example, you can: Create a plan to build up your strengths even more. List ways you can work on building up your weaknesses. Set SMART goals for each of the opportunities you identified. Devise a plan to use your strengths to decrease the threats you identified. Then, look for ways to combine data from different quadrants in even more ways: Explore how you can combine your strengths and opportunities to develop new strategies. Try combining strengths and threats to identify threats you can eliminate. Look at your weaknesses and opportunities to create a list of areas ready for improvement. Make a list of areas to avoid that fall under weaknesses and threats. Once you understand how to establish your SWOT data and find ways to use it strategically, the SWOT analysis will be a tool that you can use over and over in your business to improve further strategies accordingly to current. Progauge, will share its own SWOT analysis in series, which we have brainstorms over our yearly business meeting. Hope with this sharing you able to have some lead to gets your own SWOT analysis up and running in your company and improve tremendously.
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