SWOT Analysis is a strategic planning tool employed to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats included in any business venture, project or even in any particular situation. Actually, first time it was used by Albert Humphrey, who performed a research project in 1970 at Stanford University. This analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) is […]
Questions to Ask during SWOT Analysis - SWOT Analysis
According to Mitchell Weiss, “Companies can’t hope to take advantage of or control the external factors until the internals have been objectively assessed”. Although this saying of Mitchel Weiss does an excellent job of demystifying the primary objective of SWOT, but how to achieve this aim depends greatly on the questions that you focus during your analysis and planning. The more honest and tougher the questions, the more reliable your analysis becomes in making your strategy successful. Therefore, to help readers, we have compiled a list of questions asked during the whole procedure:
- What are our assets, and which one of them is strongest to our cause?
- Are our machinery and workers’ skill sets up to date?
- Do we have something unique to offer to our customers?
- What gives us an advantage as compared to our competitors?
- What are the weak points in our strategy?
- Which weak points are proving advantageous towards our competitors?
- Are we focusing enough towards the improvement of these weaknesses?
- What opportunities the external changes offer to us?
- Are we capable of taking full advantage of these opportunities?
- Do these opportunities come in the form of change of trends or a weak competitor failing to satisfy its customer base? And if these changes are periodic in nature?
- Is our brand name helping us in broadening up our customer base?
- What are the threats to our client base?
- Will political instability, natural disaster or change in governmental policies affect our production?
- Which competitors can give us a tough time in near or far future?
- Are our workers satisfied with their workload and financial balance?
- Are our prices too high for our customers?
- Are we missing something on which we should focus?