Do You Understand Your Business? SWOT Analyse it!

Do you understand your business? A lot of factors both internally and externally affect the performance of a business.  It could be the quality of your services and products, your competitors or perhaps government regulations.

To transform your small business start up into a profitable and sustainable entity you will need to know these factors and how they affect your business.

The best way to identify the standing of your business is by conducting a SWOT analysis – a phrase used to abbreviate:

Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats

A SWOT analysis is crucial when it comes to evaluating your business, unveiling a new product and planning for the future. At times it might raise a red flag and warn you of looming dangers in your business or project.

According to the SWOT analysis, your strengths would include things like the quality of your products, good distribution channel and good public image.

Your weaknesses on the other hand would include poor quality products, poor distribution channels and negative perceptions among the publics. Both weaknesses and strengths are internal factors.

External factors such as technological advances and political unrest will ultimately affect your business. According to the SWOT analysis your opportunities would include things like reduced taxation and technological advances

Threats would include price wars and new innovative products unveiled by competitors.

When conducting a SWOT analysis it is important to be honest with yourself and outline all factors.

You can find a free SWOT analysis template and examples on how to use the same here swotanalysisfreetemplate

Go ahead, fill it in!

Image: SWOT Analysis Signpost by scottchan on www.freedigitalphotos.net