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Analyzing Your Business's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats

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Analyzing Your Business’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
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SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) is a method of assessing a business, its resources, and its environment. Doing an analysis of this type is a good way to better understand a business and its markets, and can also show potential investors that all options open to, or affecting a business at a given time have been thought about thoroughly. The essence of the SWOT analysis is to discover what you do well; how you could improve; whether you are making the most of the opportunities around you; and whether there are any changes in your market—such as technological developments, mergers of businesses, or unreliability of …show more content…

Don’t just make a list of mistakes that have been made, such as an occasion when a customer was not called back promptly. Try to see the broader picture instead and learn from what happened. It may be that your systems or processes could be improved so that customers are contacted at the right time, so work on boosting your systems and making that change happen rather than looking about for someone to blame. It’s a good idea to get an outside viewpoint on what your weaknesses are as your own perceptions may not always marry up to reality. You may strongly believe that your years of experience in a sector reflect your business’s thorough grounding and knowledge of all of your customers’ needs. Your customers, on the other hand, may perceive this wealth of experience as an old-fashioned approach that shows an unwillingness to change and work with new ideas. Be prepared to hear things you may not like, but which, ultimately, may be extremely helpful. Spot the Opportunities The next step is to analyze your opportunities, and this can be tackled in several ways. External opportunities can include the misfortune of competitors who are not performing well, providing you with the opportunity to do better. There may be technological developments that you could benefit from, such as broadband arriving in your area, or a new process enhancing your products. There may be some legislative changes

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