SWOT Analysis Example for shoes company (PT. DONAY Bandung Indonesia)

Five years ago I successfully completed a study on the SWOT analysis in a shoe company named PT. DONAY Bandung, Indonesia (This can be an example of SWOT analysis). I made a SWOT analysis for the company, and surprisingly, after five years, they admit that there is influence from the research which I undertook to productivity and sales of shoes. The Company is taking steps to learn it and implement the results of the SWOT analysis that I have made. I am very pleased to hear the progress is due to research on the SWOT analysis I have done is not in vain and could be beneficial for the company.

I will try to share about the results of the SWOT analysis that I have made for the PT. DONAY, Bandung, Indonesia. This result is presented in table form:

SWOT Analysis: Implementation on Blog Management

A SWOT analysis is a strategic tool that has been used for many years in business (and many other fields) to look at the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that that business might have or be facing.

Much has been written about SWOT analysis and how to carry it out (I’ll let you do some searches on Google for it if you’re not familiar with it) however let me write a brief description of how to apply it to a blog.

So what should you do with SWOT Analysis on your blog? Let's check this out.

1. Define Your Mission and Goals

Before you carry out your SWOT it’s important that you know what your blog’s goals are (otherwise the exercise is a little pointless as you’ve got nothing to review your site based upon). As a result you’ll want to have done Day 28’s task – Define Your Blogs Mission Statement.

2. List Your Blog’s Strengths

What attributes does your blog have that will help you to achieve your blog’s goals? What does your blog have going for it? What are you good at as a blogger? What resources and assets do you have at your disposal? What do you do better than anyone else?

3. List Your Blog’s Weaknesses

What attributes does your blog that are holding you back from achieving it’s goals? What skills do you not have as a blogger? What is ‘broken’ on your blog or in your workflow? What could or should you improve about your blog? What should you probably avoid in your blogging? What is distracting you from your goals?

4. List Your Blog’s Opportunities

What external things could/are helping you achieve your blog’s goals? What trends are their in your blog’s niche that you could explore on your blog? What tools and technologies could you use to improve your blog?

5. List Your Blog’s Threats

What external things could or area hindering you achieving your blog’s goals? What are other blogs in your niche doing that could be hindrance to your own blog’s growth?

note – Think of Strengths and Weaknesses as internal factors while Opportunities and Threats are external factors.

6. Analyze Your Reflections and Generate Strategies

Take some time out to work out what you can do with your findings. How can you utilize your Strengths? How can you bring your Weaknesses to an end? How can you make the most of your Opportunities? how can you fend off the Threats?

As my old Marketing lecturer used to say – ‘doing the analysis of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats is only half the job. Working out how to turn Weaknesses into Strengths and Threats into Opportunities is the key part of a SWOT analysis’.

7. Plan to Do Something and Do It

Translate your findings into an Action Plan and begin to implement it.

Doing a SWOT analysis is something that I do periodically on my individual blogs and on my overarching business also. Have you ever done one on your blog? What tips would you give to others wanting to do one?

Improve Your Business Using SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis or TOWS analysis, Analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of a business is an established tool that is widely used by academics, consultants, and advisors. Although a simple concept, business owners often struggle when trying to use it because it is very broad. It is difficult to determine where to start, what questions to ask, and where to focus. Obvious problems get attention while many other important things can be ignored. SWOT analysis is a great tool, but effective use requires additional structure.

In the SWOT or TOWS analysis, Strengths and weaknesses relate to internal factors, while opportunities and threats cover external. Internal factors can be divided into five categories: management, labor, sales and marketing, operational, and financial. The external factors are also divided into five categories: threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, customers bargaining, the threat of competition from competitors, and the threat of substitution.

To approach the analysis in a structured way, prepare a list of use categories mentioned above. Identify the factors in each category that are important to your business. Under management for example, the major weakness for virtually every small business is relying too much on their owners. What will happen to business if something happens to the owner? In the category of the labor factor can be employee turnover and availability of new employees. The threat of new entrants might include the possibility of big box retailers opening near your business. Bargaining power of suppliers and customers categories should consider the possibility of losing a major supplier or customer. Comes with a number of factors for each category to complete the list. It is important that you do not try to assess or solve any problems you identify them. If you do, you'll be stuck on each factor and never complete the analysis.

Once the list is complete, you have to assess each factor based on its importance to your business. Use the alphabetical scale from A to E, where A = very important, B = important, C = critical number, D = little importance, and E = not important. Next rate each factor based on the capability (internal) or vulnerability (external). Use a numerical scale from 1 to 5, where 1 = very proficient or not vulnerable, 2 = proficient or little vulnerability, 3 = average ability or some vulnerability, 4 = poor proficiency or vulnerable, and less or 5 = very susceptible.

Factor with the lowest letter and the highest number (A5) is the biggest weakness or threat. That the lowest point and the lowest number (A1) is the greatest strength or opportunity.

Using a structured approach to create a SWOT analysis is possible and practical for any small business. To make this process worthwhile you must use this information to take action. Working to fix the worst problems first, prepare the biggest risks, take advantage of the best opportunities, and build your secondary strengths.

How to Perform SWOT ANALYSIS or TOWS ANALYSIS

SWOT Analysis and TOWS analysis is a valuable step in the analysis of your situation. Assess your company's strengths, weaknesses, market opportunities, and threats through a SWOT analysis and TOWS analysis is a very simple process that can offer powerful insights into the potential issues and critically affect a business.

The SWOT analysis and TOWS analysis begins by conducting an inventory of internal strengths and weaknesses in your organization. You will then see the external opportunities and threats that could affect the organization, based on your market and the overall environment. Do not worry about elaborating on this topic at this stage; bullet points may be the best way to get started. Capture you believe are relevant factors in each of four regions. You will want to review what has been noted here as you work through your marketing plan. The main purpose of the SWOT analysis is to identify and assign each significant factor, positive and negative, with one of four categories, so you can view your business objectively. SWOT or TOWS analysis will be a useful tool in developing and confirming your marketing objectives and strategies.

Some experts suggest that you consider more elaborate external opportunities and threats before the strengths and weaknesses. Marketing Plan Pro will allow you to complete your SWOT analysis and TOWS Analysis in whatever order works best for you. In either situation, you will want to review these four areas in detail.

Strength

Illustrates the power of positive attributes, tangible and intangible, internal to your organization. They are in your control. What do you do well? What resources do you have? What are the advantages you have over your competitors?

You may want to evaluate your strengths on a regional basis, such as marketing, finance, manufacturing, and organizational structure. Strengths including the positive attributes of the people involved in the business, including their knowledge, background, education, letters, contacts, reputation, or skills that they bring. Strength also includes intangible assets such as available capital, equipment, credit, customer established, existing distribution channels, copyrighted materials, patents, and information processing systems, and other valuable resource in business.

Strength capture the positive aspects internal to your business that adds value or offer you a competitive advantage. This is your chance to remind yourself of the existing value in your business.

Weakness

Note weaknesses in your business. Weakness is a factor within your control that reduce your ability to obtain or maintain competitive advantage. Areas you might improve?

Weaknesses might include lack of expertise, limited resources, lack of access to skills or technology, inferior service, or poor location of your business. These are factors that are under your control, but for various reasons, which need improvement to effectively accomplish your marketing goals.

Weaknesses capture the negative aspects internal to your business which reduces the value you offer, or a place you at a competitive loss. This is the area that you need to improve in order to compete with the best of your competitors. The more accurately you identify your weaknesses, the more valuable the SWOT or TOWS will be for your assessment.

Opportunities

Assess opportunities interesting external factor is the reason for your business there and prosper. It is external to your business. Are there opportunities in your market, or in the environment, than you expect to benefit?

These opportunities reflect the potential you can realize through implementing your marketing strategy. Opportunities may be the result of market growth, lifestyle changes, the settlement of problems associated with the current situation, positive market perceptions about your business, or the ability to offer greater value that will create demand for your services. If the relevant time period where, in the vicinity of opportunity. Is this an ongoing opportunity, or whether the window of opportunity? How critical is your time?

Opportunities outside of your business. If you have identified "opportunities" that internal to the organization and within your control, you will want to classify them as strengths.

Threat

What factors are potential threats to your business? Threats include factors beyond your control that can put your marketing strategy, or the business itself, at risk. It also external - you have no control over them, but you can get the benefits of having an emergency plan to deal with them if they should occur.

The threat is the challenge created by an unfavorable trend or development that can lead to worsening of income or profit. Competition - existing or potentially - always a threat. Other threats may include intolerable price increases by suppliers, government regulation, economic downturns, destroy or scope of press and media, consumer behavior change to reduce your sales, or the introduction of a "leap-frog" technologies that can make your product, equipment or services obsolete . What situations might threaten your marketing efforts? Get your worst fears on the table. Part of this list may be speculative, and still add value to your SWOT analysis.

This may be valuable to classify your threats according to "their seriousness" and "probability of occurrence."

The better you to identify potential threats, the more likely you can position themselves to proactively plan and respond to them. You will look back on these threats when you consider your contingency plans.

Implication

Internal strengths and weaknesses, compared with external opportunities and threats, can provide additional insight into the condition and potential business. How can you use power to take better advantage of opportunities ahead and minimize the threat of danger that may be introduced if they become reality? How can weaknesses be minimized or eliminated? The actual value of the SWOT analysis in bringing this information together, to assess the most promising opportunities, and issues most important.

An example

AMT is a computer store in the middle market in the United States. Lately, business has steadily declined through, mainly due to increasing competition from larger stores office products with national brand names. Here is a SWOT analysis is included in marketing plans.

Strength

1. Knowledge. Our competitors are retailers, pushing boxes. We know systems, networks, connectivity, programming, all the Value Added Reseller (vars), and data management.
2. Relationship selling. We know our customers, one by one. Our direct sales force maintains close contact.
3. History. We've been in town forever. We have the loyalty of customers and vendors. We are a local.
   

Weakness

1. Cost. Chain stores have better economics. their per-unit sales costs low enough. They do not offer what we offer in terms of selling knowledge, but the cost per square foot and per dollar of sales is much lower.
2. Price and volume. Major stores pushing boxes can sell less. component of their costs are less and they benefit from volume buying with the main vendors.
3. Brand power. Take one look at them full-page ads, in color, in the Sunday paper. We can not match that. We do not have national name that flows into national advertising.
   

Opportunities

1. Local area network. LAN become commonplace in small business, and even in my home office. Business today assume LANs are part of normal office work. This is an opportunity for us because LANs are much more knowledge and service intensive than the standard PC off-the-shelf.
2. Internet. The increasing opportunities of the Internet offer us another field strength compared to the box-on-the-shelf major chain stores. Our customers want to help more with the Internet and we are in a better position to give it to them.
3. Training. Large stores do not provide training, but as systems become more complicated with LAN and Internet usage, training more in demand. This is particularly true of our main target market.
4. Service. As our target market needs more service, our competitors are less likely than ever to provide it. their business model does not include service, just selling boxes.
   

Threat

1. Computer as a tool. Volume of purchases and sales of computers as products in boxes, should not need support, training, connectivity services, etc. As people think of computers in these terms, they think they need our service orientation less.
2. Greater price-oriented stores. When they lower the price of a big ad in the newspaper, our customers think we do not give good value.
   

Utilizing the SWOT analysis or TOWS analysis can bring insights into time well invested.