Plan: Preface

Strengths: What is the organization good at doing? What are the key differentiators do they offer? What are the primary resources they have?
Strengths depict the positive factors of an organization which they can control. They can be analyzed by dividing the organization into sales, finance, marketing, research and development, and other structural elements. Strengths involve the positive contribution of key stakeholders in terms of experience, knowledge, educational background and such skills that contribute towards the performance of an organization. This analysis factor also includes tangible aspects such as distribution channel, existing customers, generated finance, accessories etc.
Factors that add value to an organization’s operation by internal analysis and in turn build a competitive advantage called Strengths.
We use the same questions in order to conduct SWOT analyze which describe us where company is going on.
Weaknesses: Where do you think there is a scope for improvement?
Weaknesses are those elements of the business which still need a lot of enhancement and are bringing the organization down in more than one ways. There are certain areas of business which might not be shaping up according to expectation and this is leading to friction in achieving the desired goals.
Segments such as subject matter expertise, lack of financial support, unavailability of appropriate technological tools for training, an inappropriate location of the organization, etc. can fall under the category of “weakness”. These segments are under an organization’s control but are contributing to significant losses.
Weaknesses are negative attributes which are contributing to an organization’s competitive disadvantage. An accurate understanding of negative characteristics will help an organization to improve and compete with the best in the business.
Opportunities: What are the opportunities in the market, the ones from which an organization can prosper?
Opportunities gauge attractive elements of a market which can contribute towards more profits for an organization. These are external to an organization’s environment. There are always new avenues the crop up after executing marketing strategies. So, opportunities are generally the outcome of revenue/market growth, changes in market perception, a solution to difficulties faced by the market currently, the ability of an organization to add value to the market need that in turn increase brand value. Associate a timeline for the identified opportunity after understanding whether it fits the current marketing strategy and also, whether the opportunity can be seized in the pre-decided timeline.
Threats: Which aspects of the market are a threat to a business?
Threats indicate those factors which may cause harm to the organization’s existing marketing strategies and also eventually lead to business losses. An organization can profit from inculcating the possibility of these risks into their marketing plans. Threats are those uncontrollable factors which will create business losses. Competitors, change in government policies, bad press coverage for products/services/events, a shift in customer behavior, change in market dynamics which might make certain product outdated and other similar angles are considered to be threats.
There are two types of factors in business: Internal and External. The factors which would exist irrespective of the existence of a specific organization are considered to be external and those that exist within an organization are of course, internal.
Implement the below mentioned 8 steps for SWOT analysis to develop a business plan: