Understanding SWOT Analysis

Introduction
● Hello and welcome to the introduction lecture of a quick guide to
SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis is the most commonly used
business and political tool.
● It's simple quick low cost and very fact. It's what analysis gets the
job done. And this is how it works.
● We have four categories. Your company's strengths and
weaknesses and threats and opportunities.
● Now before we get any further. It is very important to remember that
strengths and weaknesses are internal to your company. Meaning
that if your company would disappear they would too.
● While opportunities in press are external meaning that your
company would be destroyed they would still exist in the market.
● So now first you need to get her old information on every category.
It is important that you get as much information as possible yet
keep it relevant and true. If you work or own the company or trading
the product yourself then you would have no problems at all. But if
you are trying to analyze a different company or product you will
probably have to spend more time gathering the info but it will be
worth it in the end.
● Knowledge you have all the necessary information gathered on all
four categories. You need to transfer it into a two by two Matrix like
the one on the slide as you can see the left column consists of
positive factors while the right column consists of negative factors.
Also the top row is made of internal elements and the bottom row
are external elements.
● Now based on this matrix you can pick up the best duded business
strategy for you and create a relevant plan of action that will help
you to achieve success. Sounds simple enough doesn't it.
● And in the upcoming tutorials we will go over every element and
detail as well as learn some additional content such as different
tips and tricks to make sure you will become this one analysis
expert. You were born to be.
 ● And also it will help you to avoid making any mistakes and
News-Wall and all system its full potential. I hope you're as excited
as I am and I will see you in the next one.

What is SWOT analysis?.

● As you already know SWOT stands for Strengths Weaknesses
Opportunities and Threats and it is the most used analytical tool even
though it is the most commonly used in business area.
● It is in no way limited to it. The principles and rules of SWOT analysis are
perfectly transferable from business world to things that are in no way
connected business like a project you might be working on in your free
time or if you're having trouble making a decision.
● This is due to the fact that SWOT analysis is a great way of developing a
full awareness of all factors.
● Positive and negative that might affect your planning and decision making.
Also the simple two by two Matrix presentation style makes suite a great
way of storing your research in a logical and easy to share format again.
● So back to the business world SWOT analysis is great for business
planning strategic planning competitor affiliation marketing business and
product development and market research.
● As you can see there are quite a lot of things you can use one analysis
for. So at any point you're feeling stuck with any project. Try conducting a
SWOT analysis and you just might find a great and innovative solution.
● OK so again strength and opportunities are positive factors while
weaknesses and threats are negative.
● Important thing to remember is that strengths and weaknesses are
internal to your company like group station or location of your shop. You
can affect them if you want to.
● For example move to a better location or hire more employees
opportunities in threats are external like your competitors or market prices.
● These elements are out of your power and will happen whether you like it
or not. You can not affect them.So what is a very powerful tool.Yet simple.
What I mean when I say simple well I mean that it has no cost of
execution and requires very little time to perform. You do not need to pay
for any sophisticated software or hire a professional.
● If you want to conduct this analysis and you don't need to spend a whole
week doing it the only thing you need is information you need relevant up
to date and on this information. If you're working on the project or in the
company that you are analyzing then you have the information by default
and it doesn't pose any difficulties for you.
● However if you are performing a SWOT analysis and something that you
do not have full understanding of you will have to spend time and effort
 properly researching it beforehand with the SWOT analysis. The more
relevant information you put in the more relevant results you will get.
● If there are several people working on the project it might be a good idea
to perform SWOT analysis by every team member to increase the
efficiency of results.
● So to recap we've talked about what's what analysis is where there's a
play couple.
● And why is this so important to get relevant information about the subject
of their analysis beforehand.

When to use SWOT?

● It is very important to learn this material not only because you will
know exact today is worse what is most applicable but mostly
because it will guide you in the right direction.
● Every project is different and even those swanned analysis can be
performed almost any time. So let's dive straight into it.
● First of all SWOT analysis is a useful tool for brainstorming and
conducting research. It has a simple design. It is very easy to
understand.
● So some of your coworkers never even heard of SWOT which is
highly unlikable. They can still read the material and understand
how you achieved the end results but someone else's becomes a lot
more powerful if it is conducted with a specific objective or
question in mind.
● For example you can use the SWOT analysis to help you decide how
you should take advantage of a new business opportunity. If you
should do it at all.
● Sometimes even the most appealing opportunities can end up
costing you way more in the long term. SWOT analysis is a great
tool of figuring out how to deal with the constantly changing market
and it is particularly useful when it comes down to responding to
new trends implementing technologies dealing with changes to
your competitors operations and detecting new threats to your
business.
● All of this events secure quite often in business world and SWOT
analysis is a great way of solving this problems. It will present you
all the factors you have now and all the positive and negative sides
of dealing or not dealing with the newly discovered friend or
opportunity making your choice fairly simple.
 ● SWOT analysis is also a great way of discovering new solutions to
already existing problems. Taking from the side look at your
business and your problems might help you figuring out the new
ways of solving the old problems new organizations can use SWOT
analysis to understand what they can expect from the market and in
which direction they should advance their business. Existing
businesses can use SWOT analysis for a retrospective analysis that
will help them to identify the areas in which they failed or
succeeded allowing them to make better decisions in the upcoming
years.
● It is a good idea to conduct SWOT analysis every year so you can
track your progress and possibly identify different trends that can
be used to your advantage.
● Also SWOT analysis is a great way to adjust your company's course
Midway and the opportunity might have opened up that you didn't
account for in the initial planning phase.
● Now you can use or an unexpected threat might have appeared and
is jeopardizing the whole business and you might not even know
about it. As you can see SWOT analysis has a lot of different
implementations in the business world. It can be used to your
advantage at any stage of the project initiation planning execution
or closure. Make sure to remember this and you saw the analysis
more often. You might be surprised at how effective it will turn out.
● Also I hope you learned a SWOT analysis can help you in solving
any issues related to your business plan or not.

S (Strength)
● Strengths category of SWOT analysis strengths our internal positive
factors that are essential for your business to gaining competitive
edge.
● SWOT analysis will help you to identify areas of your business that
are performing well. These factors are essential for a business to
gain the advantage over the competitors. It is important to identify
all your strengths so you can maintain them and keep your
advantages over the market.
● It is also important to know your strengths because if you want to
expand or grow your business you will need to make sure you're
using all your strengths to their maximum potential.
 ● So here are some questions that you can ask yourself that will help
you to identify your companies or projects strengths.
● What do you do well. This is the simplest question you can ask
yourself but it will help you to understand the direction in which you
should be thinking and analyzing your business what internal
resources do you have. For example do your employees attributes
such as their knowledge efficiency reputation or skills. Also it can
be your company's assets such as the overall capital existing
customer base existing distribution and marketing channels.
● What advantages do you have over your competition. For example it
can be your companys location or the technology used in producing
the product. So these are just a few questions to help you
understand the kind of questions you should be asking yourself in
order to find out all your strengths.
● It is important to remember that your company cements our internal
meaning that they are completely under your control and you can
decide how to use them to achieve competitive advantage.
● Its also important to understand that if you have a factor that can
be considered a strength but so do your competitors let's say good
business reputation or great location you can not listed as one of
your strengths since it is more of a necessity for your business than
anything else. And always remember when analyzing your business.
Be honest. Don't sell yourself short but also don't lie about any
factors.
● It is important that all the information you use for your support
analysis is as relevant as possible.
● So we have learned about strengths internal positive factors of your
business that allow you to gain competitive edge in the market. We
have also gone through some questions that might help you to
identify your companys strengths and use them to your advantage
in the next story.

W (Weaknesses)
● Weaknesses are internal negative factors of your business that put
you to a disadvantage compared to your competition. Conducting a
one analysis can help you to identify them and therefore work on
minimizing or completely removing their negative effects on your
business.
 ● It is important to solve all your weaknesses quickly in order to gain
the competitive advantage. So how do we identify our weaknesses?
● Well here are several questions that will help you to get on the right
track.
● What factors under your control prevent you from obtaining
competitive edge. For example it might be a location bad reputation
on the market your company might be understaffed your production
process hasn't been updated in years and have lost its ability to
compete in a modern market.
● Another question you can ask yourself is what areas of your
business need improvement to accomplish your objective. Maybe
you need to improve your employees implement a better training
program host more team building events introduce employee
evaluation of potential rewards or punishments.
● Last question you can ask yourself is What does your business lack.
This can be a very broad topic but try and keep it as real as he
possibly can and also try and focus on the most essential needs
first. Like upgrading your working equipment or achieving a strong
social media presence.
● I hope this questions will help you to learn your weaknesses and
break them down to simple topics. A good thing to remember is
that when you think about weaknesses you intuitively focus on
coming up with a strategy that focuses on solving each issue
individually and completely rivermen it from the picture.
● While conducting is one analysis try and focus on coming up with
solutions that will let you get the competitive edge even though it
might not solve your problems completely and again make sure
you're honest to yourself and record only relevant witnesses.

O (Opportunities)
● Opportunities in SWOT analysis opportunities are external positive
elements that are traded by factors that you have no control of like
neutrons or market changes.
● But if you identify them you can act on them and greatly improve
your business bringing you a step closer to gaining advantage over
all your competitors.
● Opportunities are external factors meaning that they would still
exist in the market even if your business was to disappear. Some of
 the reasons behind opportunities might be change in consumer
demand.
● New government policy new research that proves your product or
service to have positive effect on consumers.
● Opportunities are positive factors. So if you act on them you will
succeed greatly. But if you don't act on them even though you're not
losing anything in particular your competitors might use these
opportunities to their advantage is ultimately hurting your business.
● So how can we identify opportunities in the market.Well here are
some questions that should help you to identify your opportunities.
● Firstly what opportunities exist in your market or environment that
you can benefit from. I know this question is very generic but it
helps you to identify your environment help you record some
general and obvious opportunities that you might have like
marketing for social media or using another popular trend to your
advantage.
● Another question you might ask yourself is is the perception of your
business positive. Can you benefit from your company's image
under any ways you can use that to your advantage. Like
introducing a new product to the market or raising awareness of
your product through different social campaigns.
● Another question might be has there been any recent market drove
or any other market change that might have created an opportunity
for you. It is important to constantly monitor the market shifts
because competitors bankruptcy can be used to your great
advantage as you have potential of gaining new consumers. If you
act correctly and the last question you might be asking yourself is is
the opportunity constant or is it just a short window. This question
lets you to prioritize your opportunities based on the time you have
to act on them. Some opportunities are required quick decisions
and fast actions to be realized. Others do not critically depend on
your timing an important thing to remember is that sometimes
opportunities can fall under your internal factors.
● For example if your company is substituted by government while
your competitors are not lets say due to your eco friendliness you
should record this as a strength rather than an opportunity.
● So we have learned about opportunities. Opportunities are external
positive factors that if acted upon. Let your business prosper and
get competitive advantage when identifying your partner.
T (Threats)
● Threats are external negative factors the key factor of conducting
any sort analysis is to identify as many friends as possible. So you
can pair your business and react to them quickly and effectively.
● So how do we identify threats. Well firstly pressor external factors
meaning that as opportunities they would still exist in the world. If
your business was to disappear.
● Some examples of France are your competitors new advertising
campaign new government policies or negative shifts in the market.
● Secondly threats can be of several different kinds. There are very
unique to the kind of business you have for example. Bad weather
can be considered as a threat for the agriculture industry. If you're in
the movie industry receiving negative critical reviews is one of your
biggest threats.
● The most common for almost all businesses share is competition.
Each one of your competitors can be regarded as a potential threat.
Since you do not know how they're going to be expanding their
business. The important thing to remember with threats is that
classifying them might be very beneficial for your business. There
are countless threats that even though you can identify but
preparing for it seems wasteful.
● For example a war breaking up or a scientific breakthrough that will
make your product or service obsolete. However there are a lot of
friends that you should definitely count for and be prepared.The
most common classification happens via two factors seriousness
and likelihood.
● You evaluate every threats you can identify based on how likely it is
to happen and how bad will it be if it is to happen and then you can
pick the most alarming threats and work to prevent them from
happening.
● So here's some quick questions to help you identify your potential
threats. Who are your existing or potential competitors. As always
we start with a very broad question. The main objective of which is
to identify the general direction you should be looking into to
identify more threats.
● Another question you can ask is what factors beyond your control
can jeopardize your business. Make sure you classified this threats
so you don't end up with thousands of potential threats.
 ● Another question is Have there been any recent shifts in the market
related to your product or service for example price changes. Export
import restrictions. Introduction of a better cheaper product or
service. That's alternative.
● And so on last question you might ask yourself is have there been
any recent shifts in consumer behavior related to your product or
service like public started seeing your business as harmful. People
started boycotting your products or public relations disaster.’

How SWOT works?

● Two by two Matrix work. It is not complicated at all. However it is
essential that you have a good understanding of how it works to
begin with.
● We draw two by two matrix and then we position the categories in
such a way that strands are in the top left corner.
● Weaknesses are in top prize and in bottom left corner we have
opportunities while Freda's are located in the bottom right corner.
This positioning allows us to have internal categories on the top
row and external categories and the bottom row.
● Also the positive factors will be positioned in the left column while
negative factors will be sedated in the right column fairly simple
positioning really.
● Now all we need to do is to fill our matrix. Make sure to insert all
different topics as separate lines. Keep it brief but understandable
and logical. It is completely fine if some categories will have more
elements than others commonly the threats category has the
highest number of entries. But you should have a couple elements
in each category.
● Now you're done you have identified all of your company's strengths
weaknesses opportunities and threats in a very easy to present and
read form. This should easily allow you to pick a right strategy to
make sure your business succeeds.
● For example if you see that your opportunities and strengths
significantly outnumber your weaknesses and threats it might be a
good time to expand your business and conquered the market. On
the other hand if you see that there are too many weaknesses and
threats you might want to address them first. Making sure your
business doesn't cease to exist immediately. Well of course with all
your knowledge I don't expect you to stick to this traditional format
 as you might want to experiment or develop the matrix to suit your
personal needs. Just remember that you have all the knowledge
and for the analysis. So don't be afraid to try some variations since
your personal needs probably differ from the standardized version

Strengths Weaknesses

● What do you do well? ● What factors under your control

● What internal resources do you prevent you from obtaining
have? competitive edge?
● What advantages do you have ● What areas of your business
over your competition? need improvement to
accomplish your objective?
● What does your business lack?

Opportunities Threats

● What opportunities exist in your ● Who are your existing or

market or environment that you potential competitors?
can benefit from? ● What factors beyond your
● Is the perception of your control can jeopardise your
business positive? business?
● Has there been recent market ● Have there been any recent
growth or any other market shifts in market related to your
change that might have created products or services?
an Opportunity for you? ● Have there been any recent
● Is the opportunity constant or is shifts in consumer behaviour
it just short window? related to your product/service?

Case study
● In this chapter, we will be looking at a made up smartphone X that is
similar to real world smartphones such as Indian freedom to fight
one or Chinese outcome and for one for educational purposes we
will be looking at distributing our smartphone X in the US market.
So here a bit of specifications on our product.
● It is a cheap mass produced smartphone that runs on Android 5.1
and has all the essential functions and knowledge is Alden's as a
 smartphone. It has the ability to connect to 4G as well as Wi-Fi and
Ludy of connectivity a lower resolution four inch touch screen is
also included. Also it has an eight gigabytes internal storage with
the option to insert additional expandable micro is the memory up
to 52 gigabytes. There is a 1.3 megapixel front camera and five
megapixel camera. There is a Wangi goodbye DRAM memory card
inside smartphone X ultra has dual same feature and comes with
popular apps already pre-installed such as Facebook Skype and
others. The market price is set to be $80 with shipping included as
you can see smartphone X has several interesting features. Most
noticeably its price even though there are far more advanced
smartphones on the market already such a huge cost difference
might allow smartphone X to conquer its own niche inside the
smartphone market in the United States.
● So now let's go ahead and piriformis what analysis first let's take a
look at all the strengths the main strength of course is the chip
price of our smartphone. It is very affordable. The second strength
might be its availability. You can easily order it from the internet and
get it delivered to you for free as a smartphone. Our product has all
these social functions but that is not enough to gain competitive
edge. Therefore we can not list down as a strength. I think these are
the only strands Martin X has on the current market.
● Now let's go ahead and take a look at the weaknesses. It has a
relatively small screen compared to the latest smartphones in the
market. Moreover the internal components of smartphone X lose to
every other new smartphone on the market big time. I would also
include the like brand behind our product since nowadays
smartphone success in the market depends a lot on itself. And
again x is the bad sport on the market.
● Now lets move to opportunity's smartphone X can feel a very
interesting niche in the market. It can become a very cheap
smartphone that still lets people to use Internet and have all the
essential apps to play around with X can also be users fall in case if
you lost or broke your current smartphone and need to substitute
for the time being you can always use smartphone X as a cheap
alternative. That still lets you access all these social functions of a
smartphone. So the right marketing smartphone X can become a
perfect backup smartphone that you can use in times and places
you would never use your main expensive Liguria smartphone.
 ● Now lets move on to practice to begin with. There is no established
brand behind our product meaning that at any point big companies
such as Apple or Samsung decided to create an alternative to X.
They would most likely quickly destroy the smartphone apps in the
market and not big threat is that since our product has unique
features and is entering a very big existing market. The first
negative reviews and feedback can destroy our product. So yep
there it is. Of course this is not a super detailed sweat analysis but I
think we have covered all the essentials and now have a pretty good
matrix in front of us.
● As you can see all our strengths and opportunities are centered
around the uniqueness of our product and its ability to conquer a
specific niche in their already existing market.
● Our weaknesses and threats had mostly lie in the fact that if we did
not succeed in creating this nation our products will fail on the
current market. Looking at this I would suggest making sure to
spend as much resources as possible on correct advertising and
promotion making sure consumers associate smartphone X with
the smartphone that is essential to have as a cheap backup or
secondary phone.

Tips and Trick

● Firstly remember the more people participate in your SWOT analysis
the more accurate the results will be. Get as many people from
inside of the company as well as people from the outside
questionnaires and customer feedback is a great way to receive
valuable information from your customers and clients.
● Secondly remember that your SWOT's analysis becomes much
more powerful and accurate. If you have a defined idea why you
perform it in the first place this will ensure that you will not be
inputting all the information there is and struggling with prioritizing
but have a clear vision which will not only improve the end result but
also reduce the time it will take to perform the analysis.
● Thirdly try brainstorming all four categories as four separate
documents one at a time. This will keep your focus clean and help
you easily prioritize the elements so that only the relevant
information makes it to the Matrix.
● Last but not least, be honest. SWOT analysis almost completely
depends on the information you put into it. So if it is honest and up
 to date you will get relevant solutions and then if the information is
incorrect then your results will mislead you and you will ultimately
fail.

Conclusion
Congratulations on finishing the whole chorus.
I hope you really enjoy the contents and now I know everything about this
for analysis. Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats are
different to each business and depend on lots of factors. I hope that by
completing the scores you're able to identify these elements specific for
your business and have a good understanding of house 1 and Alliss works.
The possible specter of SWOT analysis implementations is so broad that
it's impossible to show you any specific answers or steps you should
follow.

But I hope that you understand the purpose of conducting this SWOT
analysis as well as all the general actions you need to take and have
enough knowledge to be able to perform SWOT analysis at any area where
you have enough personal expertise.