A SWOT analysis paper is an incredible sample and powerful tool that improves your business approach. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Strengths and weaknesses refer to internal factors affecting a company, product, or brand that can be controlled and can change over time. Opportunities and threats are external factors outside your company, product, or brand and cannot be changed.
Who writes and uses a SWOT analysis?
A SWOT analysis technique is a big part of the whole business plan procedure. Company management needs to be deeply involved in making a SWOT analysis effective. Also, choose a group of individuals in the company who have different viewpoints on improving the product, a company, or brand.
Choose individuals who can present different departments of your organization, that is, customer services, sales to marketing, and product development. The key point is to get a different perspective in a SWOT analysis. Existing companies use a SWOT analysis in their present situation to come up with a plan to move forward. In this article, you will learn how to write a SWOT analysis and what you need to write a good SWOT analysis paper
Give a breakdown
SWOT analysis has three parts: the company, analysis, and plans that will help the business transform weaknesses into strengths, and how to use available opportunities, and counteract threats.
A SWOT analysis paper should contain these three parts; you will successfully write the analysis paper with all this.
The company
In a SWOT analysis paper, you have to begin with what the company is about: its name, origin, and date of origin. This introduction will tell the reader about the company and its products or brand. Thus, a SWOT introductory section is short but very important.
Analyze the elements
Now, you can dive to the SWOT analysis four elements that you need to focus on. Elements are the findings in your SWOT analysis that need your entire focus.
- Strengths
Here the strengths are internal, helpful features of your company that are under your control. As mentioned earlier, the internal and external resource such as talking to customers is an important part to consider. Therefore, in this part of the analysis, you need to include:
- What the company doing?
- What business methods are successful?
- What assets are available in your teams?
- What advantage do you have over your competitors?
- What tangible assets do you have, i.e., customers, cash and cash equivalents, technology, and equipment?
- Weaknesses
Next, you need to discuss the company's weaknesses. Weaknesses refer to internal negative factors that reduce the capabilities of an organization. A weakness in a company stagnates the growth of an organization, product, or brand. Hence, you might need to consider the following issues to be competitive.
- Which business procedure needs improvement?
- Why does your business need to be competitive?
- Are there physical assets your company needs, like equipment or money?
- Are gaps developing in your teams?
- Are you in a good location that can bring success to your organization?
- Opportunities
At this point you need to identify the company’s opportunities. Opportunities are the external factors that contribute to the success of your business or an organization. For the success of your business, you have to discover the ideas that entice individuals to buy more of your products. Also, you need to be aware of the upcoming events and use them to grow your business. Point out the upcoming changes that might impact the growth of your company positively. Additionally, as your business grows, know what your customers think of your products or brand. A SWOT analysis helps you to make the necessary adjustment in your organization. Read more on how to make a SWOT analysis in PowerPoint and Microsoft word now!
- Threats
Then, highlight the company’s threats. Threats are external aspects that you cannot control and can harm the progress of your business. Therefore, in a SWOT analysis, you have to include emergency plans for dealing with threats when they occur. When coming up with these plans, you need to consider the following:
- Are there potential competitors threatening to enter your market?
- Will the raw materials be supplied with the price you need?
- Are the customer preferences changing in a way that affects your business negatively?
- What could be the effect of future advancements in technology, and would it change the way you manage your business?
- Are there trends that could affect the growth of your business in the market?
Plans
At this point, you will have a complete SWOT analysis ready to be converted into an actual business strategy. But first, you must convert the weaknesses to strengths. How do you do this? First, check out the recorded weaknesses and look for new strategies to benefit your business. For instance, you can improve your business by having a social media presence. The most popular social media platforms used by companies include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, among others. These platforms will help introduce more people depending on your type of business. Again, after converting weaknesses to strengths, you now have to use the opportunities that show up to create a good growth strategy. For example, you can consider including any new event or moving to a new location. Finally, look for a plan to reduce your threats or neutralize them completely. You can do this by reducing the ad budget and move towards quality ads. Learn how to use a SWOT analysis to formulate strategies for your company from this resource.
In summary, a SWOT analysis assists you in discovering your strengths. You can use the strengths of your business, product, and brand to take the opportunities that come along. Also, your strengths help to fight the threats in the market. These four elements must be looked at and analyzed thoroughly. Therefore, by integrating the points discussed in a paper, you will have a complete SWOT analysis. Finally, the SWOT analysis helps you and your business or an organization understand the path to take when new opportunities arise. Check out SWOT analysis a guide to for business studies students here!
