SWOT Analysis Report: A Strategic Planning Tool for Business Growth

This report provides a comprehensive overview of SWOT analysis, a strategic planning technique used to analyze project planning and business competition. It defines the four key components: Strengths (internal advantages), Weaknesses (internal disadvantages), Opportunities (external favorable factors), and Threats (external unfavorable factors). The report explains how to identify and assess these factors to understand the internal and external environments of a project or business. It highlights the importance of recognizing strengths for competitive advantages, identifying weaknesses for improvement, exploiting opportunities for growth, and anticipating threats to mitigate risks. The conclusion emphasizes the pivotal role of SWOT analysis in decision-making, helping organizations evaluate their strategic position and achieve their goals by assessing favorable and unfavorable factors, ultimately maintaining overall performance and potential growth. References to key academic sources are included to support the analysis.

SWOT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

Introduction
 A strategic planning technique that helps to analyze project planning
or business competition is known as SWOT analysis.
 It is also known as SWOT matrix. It is an abbreviation of four
parameters.
 The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of
project planning or business competition can be identified by the
organization or person (McDonald, 2016).
 It helps to understand the internal and external environment of the
project or business.

Strength
 The advantages of the project or business is characterized by the
strength.
 It is the unique quality of the project or organization.
 It gives idea about the internal condition of the project or business.
 The competitive advantages of the project or business is denoted by
the strength.

Strength
 Thus, the strengthens separate the project or organization from the
other competitors.
 There are several examples of strengths such as unique technology,
loyal customer base, strong brand value and strong balance sheet
(Milhem, Abushamsieh & Pérez Aróstegui, 2014).
 These strengths motivate the organization to perform better than its
competitors.

Weakness
 The disadvantages of the project or organization is characterized by
the weakness.
 It create disadvantages for the project or business in comparison with
other competitors.
 It also represents the internal environment of the project or business.
 Identification of weaknesses is essential for the further improvements
of the project or business (Phadermrod, Crowder & Wills, 2019).

Weakness
 It prevents the organization to perform at its optimum level (Goetsch
& Davis, 2014)
 Therefore, weaknesses make a project or organization uncompetitive.
 There are various examples of weaknesses such as high level of debt,
weak brand value, lack of capital and inadequate supply chain.
 Therefore, elimination of weaknesses are required for sustainable
growth of the organization.

Opportunity
 The factors that are in favor of the project or organization are
opportunities (Sarhan, Atroshi & Ahmed, 2016).
 It is considered as the external factors that influence the external
environment of the project or organization.
 It also give competitive advantage to the particular project or
business.
 Therefore, opportunities affects the project or business positively.

Opportunity
 There are many examples of opportunities such as tariff reduction by
a country, which improves sales and expands market of an
organization.
 It basically open up new advantages for the project or business (Gürel
& Tat, 2017).
 Therefore, exploitation of the opportunities may take the organization
to a new height.
 It also helps to improve the competitive advantage of the
organization.

Threat
o The factors that are against the growth of the project or organization
is called threats.
o Threats affects the project or organization negatively.
o It belongs to the external environment of the project or organization.
o Therefore, anticipation of threats are required to protect the
organization from the external risks.

Threat
• There are a wide range of external problems such as environmental
factors, tight labor supply, increasing cost of raw materials and rising
competition.
• These factors hampers the potential growth of the project or
organization (Korableva & Kalimullina, 2016).
• It degrades the performance of the organization by inducing external
disadvantages.
• It may converts into weaknesses if not solved.

Conclusion
 The role of SWOT analysis is pivotal in the decision making process
(Sarsby, 2016).
 The analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
helps to evaluate the strategic position of the organization.
 In order to, achieve the goal of the organization SWOT matrix
assesses the favorable and unfavorable factors.
 It helps to maintain the overall performance of the organization by
achieving the potential growth.

References
 Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
 Gürel, E., & Tat, M. (2017). SWOT analysis: A theoretical review. Journal of International Social
Research, 10(51).
 Korableva, O. N., & Kalimullina, O. V. (2016). Strategic approach to the optimization of organization
based on BSC-SWOT matrix. In 2016 IEEE International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and
Applications (ICKEA) (pp. 212-215). IEEE.
 McDonald, M. A. L. C. O. L. M. (2016). Strategic marketing planning: theory and practice. In The
marketing book (pp. 108-142). Routledge.
 Milhem, W., Abushamsieh, K., & Pérez Aróstegui, M. N. (2014). Training Strategies, Theories and
Types. Journal of Accounting, Business & Management, 21(1).
 Phadermrod, B., Crowder, R. M., & Wills, G. B. (2019). Importance-performance analysis based SWOT
analysis. International Journal of Information Management, 44, 194-203.
 Sarhan, L. I., Atroshi, A. M., & Ahmed, N. S. (2016). A Strategic Planning of Developing Student
Information Management System Using SWOT. Journal of University of Human Development/Vol, 2(3).
 Sarsby, A. (2016). SWOT analysis. Lulu. com.