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Monday, October 08, 2007

Business Plans and SWOT

Most business plans include a SWOT analysis, but what does SWOT stand for?

The acroym SWOT represents:

S Strengths
W Weaknesses
O Opportunities
T Threats

A SWOT analysis is a planning tool used by companies to identify the above features within their organisations. Its purpose is to critically assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in order to indentify and take action to eliminate areas of concern or extract further value.

A serious self assessment of the business should be regularly undertaken, otherwise the speed of change may overwhelm and place the business at risk. However, when preparing business plans the inclusion of a SWOT analysis will provide evidence to a potential investor of control within the business, that is knowing what is going on within the organisation.

For further help visit Business Planning.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi
Great article - helps me understand more of the application of the SWOT - thanks.

I have also found the following resources of value - I hope others do to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swot_analysis
http://www.rapidbi.com/created/SWOTanalysis.html