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What is a SWOT analysis?

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Understanding your brand or project inside and out is one of the biggest keys to success. Conducting an analysis is an excellent way to identify your strengths and weaknesses and figure out what you can do to ensure your next project is a success.

Conducting a SWOT analysis is the first step to gaining insights into your company's strengths and weaknesses. A SWOT analysis gives you a clear picture of where your company excels and where it falls short, helping you pinpoint external factors affecting your company. With Confluence, conducting a SWOT analysis is simple with our SWOT analysis template.

Try Confluence to see how it can help bring your teams together.

SWOT analysis explained

A SWOT analysis is a framework used to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats surrounding your company—which is where the term “SWOT” comes from. A SWOT analysis is the same as a FODA analysis, but FODA is the Spanish translation of the term.

Identifying your strengths and weaknesses helps you determine what your company does well and where it has room for improvement. You can use your strengths to your advantage when planning projects or assembling a new team. On the other hand, identifying your weaknesses helps you determine what you need to address and improve.

Opportunities and threats are the external factors that can affect your business. While you can’t control these factors, you can reduce risks and take advantage of opportunities presented to your company. Capitalizing on external factors is one of the key benefits of SWOT analysis.

Four elements of a SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis has four elements: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In this section, we’ll examine each element and its role.

Strengths

Your company's strengths are the things it excels at. For example, you may do an excellent job of strategic planning or have a wealth of resources at your disposal. Figuring out what you do well allows you to incorporate those strengths into every project and take advantage of the qualities that set your business apart from its competitors.

Weaknesses

As important as it is to capitalize on your strengths, you also need to understand your weaknesses. Your company may lack resources, processes, or skills. Identifying your weaknesses allows you to improve in areas where you struggle, helping you stay on track to meet individual project goals and long-term company goals.

Opportunities

Opportunities are positive external factors that your company can take advantage of. Things like changing market trends and emerging technology can present lucrative business opportunities. Staying up to date with the latest trends and developments can help you keep your business up to speed.

Threats

While opportunities are positive external factors, threats are negative ones. For example, emerging technology could make your offerings obsolete. A shift in the economy can reduce consumers' spending power, cutting into your sales volume and bottom line. Holding regular collaborative meetings to identify these threats as early as possible allows you to respond appropriately.

Why is a SWOT analysis important?

Using a SWOT analysis to learn more about your business is crucial because it gives you a better understanding of the external and internal factors impacting your company and how your decisions may impact your brand.

Conducting a SWOT analysis empowers you to make more informed decisions based on your qualities as a company. With a SWOT analysis, you can quickly respond to potential opportunities or threats and put your company in the best position to succeed.

You can also use a SWOT analysis to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a particular project and get a better idea of the project scope. Learning more about your brand or project and the forces that drive it makes you a better decision-maker.

How to conduct a SWOT analysis

Now that you know what goes into a SWOT analysis, let’s discuss how to conduct one. You can also use a SWOT analysis template to streamline your SWOT analysis.

Define your goal

Before you conduct a SWOT analysis, define your goal so you understand the purpose of the analysis. 

Are you trying to gain deeper insights into your company or focusing on a single project? Are there any aspects of the analysis — like opportunities or threats — that you want to prioritize? Once you define the goal of your SWOT analysis, it’s essential to ensure your teams are on the same page.

Gather resources

Next, it’s time to gather data and feedback to conduct your analysis. Data and feedback from team members, customers, and market research can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and the market trends and technology that could potentially impact your business.

Brainstorm and list ideas

Hold a brainstorming session with key stakeholders once you have your data and feedback. You want to list your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats here. It’s essential to give each stakeholder a chance to offer input to ensure you’re creating a comprehensive list.

Use Confluence’s brainwriting template to add structure to your next brainstorming session.

Review and refine findings

The next step is to review and refine your SWOT analysis to ensure no redundancies or irrelevant items. This is especially important if you’re conducting a SWOT analysis for a project because some strengths and weaknesses may not be relevant to that particular project.

Come up with a strategy

Conducting a SWOT analysis is only part of the battle — you have to leverage that information to make informed decisions that drive your business or project forward. Use your SWOT analysis list to determine how to leverage your strengths, address and correct your weaknesses, optimize opportunities, and mitigate threats.

When implementing these strategies, set specific goals to ensure they’re implemented. For example, you may have team leaders attend leadership training if that’s a weakness you’ve identified. Creating an actionable plan helps you put your SWOT analysis to good use.

Questions to ask in a SWOT analysis

If you want to conduct an effective SWOT analysis, you have to ask the right questions. You can also get various teams and stakeholders involved to encourage project collaboration. Here are some questions you might consider asking during a SWOT analysis:

  • What are the internal strengths of the business?
  • Are there any areas of weakness the business can improve on?
  • What emerging technology or changing trends present an opportunity for the business?
  • Which external challenges or risks need to be addressed and mitigated?

As you answer these questions, you can drill down further to better understand your strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. This is especially helpful when identifying internal and external factors that might affect a specific project or task.

Common mistakes to avoid

If you’re new to conducting SWOT analyses, it’s easy to make small mistakes that make your analysis less effective. Avoiding these mistakes is essential to ensure your next SWOT analysis is a success.

One of the most common mistakes is overlooking a particular factor or stakeholder communication. Involve key stakeholders in your SWOT analysis to ensure you look at your company or project from every angle. Involving key stakeholders also helps you avoid overlooking key internal and external factors.

Focusing too much on one aspect of your company or project is easy, but that doesn’t lead to a successful analysis. Instead, you want to give equal priority to the internal and external factors that affect your company, from your strengths to the threats you face.

Businesses change over time, and your SWOT analysis should reflect those changes. If you’re not regularly updating your SWOT analysis, now is a good time to start.

Example of a SWOT analysis

Conducting a SWOT analysis may sound simple, but there are some complexities. Let’s look at a quick SWOT analysis example to learn more.

If a popular food chain conducted a SWOT analysis, it might look something like this:

Strengths

  • Global presence and brand recognition
  • Quality control
  • Customer service
  • Menu diversity

Weaknesses

  • Supply chain disruptions
  • Dissatisfied employees
  • Health concerns

Opportunities

  • Global expansion
  • Menu diversification
  • Expanding into new channels

Threats

  • Negative publicity
  • Competition
  • Shifts in health trends
  • Regulations

This company could use this information to plan for the future, finding ways to make its food healthier and less prone to negative publicity. It could also use its strengths—including brand recognition and menu diversity—to enter new markets.

Conduct an effective SWOT analysis with Confluence

Conducting a SWOT analysis is an effective way to learn more about your company or a particular project so you can make informed decisions. With Confluence, you can use the data from your SWOT analysis to update your project documentation and keep all your teams on the same page. A SWOT analysis template makes gaining insights into your company or project even easier.

Confluence empowers teams to collaborate so everyone can stay updated with the latest SWOT analysis findings and the strategies you’re implementing. Want to learn more about how you can improve project collaboration with Confluence? 

Try Confluence today and empower your teams to collaborate seamlessly.

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