SWOT analysis

  

Businesses that's been operating for a year or two can start making a SWOT analysis to their organization, specially those who has a lot of competitors in their proximity, the daily sales is not consistent.

What does SWOT really means?

S stands for STRENGTH, or what is your company good at? Example: knowledge you have, pricing, resources

W is for WEAKNESSES, what are the things that you need to improve at? like poor location, absences of staff, financial issues etc

O means OPPORTUNITIES, what trends in the market that you can exploit? like faster, stylish, etc

T means THREAT, who are the new competitors that are entering your market or can be a loss of major customers, inflation, seasonality, raw materials and transportation.

STRENGTH and WEAKNESSES can be controlled because this is a internal issue among the organization, but OPPORTUNITIES and THREAT, a phenomenon that is outside of your control.

I have here an example of an Internet Café SWOT Analysis:

 

Strengths:  Specifications of units are personalized,  it is of high quality products. Variety of services are offered from encoding, printing, photocopying, scanning,  cellphone loading and any other customer related services.

Weaknesses:  It relies solely on the internet provider and power supply to operate.

Opportunities:  The products and services can answer the needs of the customers and the possibilities of success through words of mouth can be achieved so less advertisement.  Can use the internet for other passive income like online jobs.

Threats:  Location of the internet café is not located strategically where more traffic is present.  There will be no income if there is a power and internet café shortage or technical difficulties. Influx of new entrants is high.

Plan of action: Maintain good customer relationship and provide good services all the time. Café assistant must be courteous, honest, diligent, knowledgeable and must know basic trouble shooting (and the most important is –passionate of his or her work and must be aware of what the business is all about).  Offer other related services like school supplies.  Improve marketing strategy.

By doing a SWOT analysis at least once or twice a year can be your guide on how to improve more on your services to gain more sales or improve your profit. This has worked for a lot of times to big companies and there is no harm in trying this specially to newbies.

Give a try!