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 fa...Read More

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.