Reference: Berry, T (2009, Oct. 23). How to perform a SWOT analysis. Retrieved on March 2, 2011 from "http://articles.mplans.com/how-to-perform-a-swot-analysis/”.
Summary:
This article discusses how to perform SWOT analysis. It is a valuable tool to assess the firm’s strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It is very simple tool and can offer better real picture of your company’s performance. The main goal of SWOT analysis is to identify the important factors, whether they are positive or negative, and also either internal or external. This helps the decision’s maker to see real situation of the company. We can divide SWOT into two groups, first, internal factors “strengths, and weaknesses”; second group is external factors “opportunities, and threats”. Internal factors are the factors that are managed inside the company and the company has control over them while external factors are the factors that the company has no control over them. Strengths are the good points about the company, when listing good points about the company, the company has to be proud of them and has to get the most benefit of them and strengthen them. For example, experienced employees, and new technology used and so on. It is natural that each company is trying to increase its strengths by any means. Weaknesses are the bad points that lower the company’s competitive advantage. Usually companies are trying to minimize their weaknesses to be more successful in the market. As an example of weaknesses, lack of expertise and limited resources and so on. Opportunities are the factor that the company can invest in, or getting benefits from them. For example, market growth, positive market perception about the company. Threats are the factors that may have negative influence to your company. As an example of threats is new strong competition. In sum, SWOT analysis will give to company good measure about important four factors that are mainly affect its performance. Then the author gave example of computer store in united states and he applied the analysis on it.
Reaction:
The author discussed very good points that help companies to understand their current situation and how to improve the overall performance of the company. In fact, there are so many ways used to improve company’s performance, not only SWOT analysis, but also there are P.E.S.T analysis, and target segment analysis. All of them can be used to study current situation of the company and do positive impact. I believe that companies who are not doing continuous improvements, they will go out of business when time passes. The first step in development is understanding the current position. Most of the companies do not know their current position, so they will never start developing their business process when they think they are doing fine. Actually using such a tool will be very important not for companies only also it is very important for individuals and any organization as well.
