6 SWOT Analysis Software for Small Business

S.W.O.T. is an abbreviation for Strengths; Weakness; Opportunities and Threats. Often it is sometimes called the SWOT Factor which is categorized into External and Internal factors.

SWOT Internal Factor : Strengths

The internal factors refer to the Strengths and Weaknesses of a business, organization or an internal operation. It is made comparison with the competitors. And the strengths add value in the strategic planning if it has competitive advantage over your competitor and it may help you to fulfill your order faster, provide a better customer service, lower production cost etc. The list may go on but the point is you must dig deep enough to recognized these strengths ( against your competitor ) and be able to take advantage of it. Below are some example of Strengths:

1) You are financial strong as you have big sum of reserved in your account as compared to your competitor who depends on borrowing. These information should be factual and not guess work.

2) You can provide immediate delivery of goods to your customer order as compared to next day delivery by your competitor. Again, this claim must be factual and preferably got it from customer’s feedback. But then it is only a useful strength if your customer asked for immediate delivery otherwise, it is not a value-add to the customer and therefore it should not be taken as a Strength for SWOT Analysis Purpose.

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WEAKNESSES :

Having listed as many Strengths as you could find, then do the same for the Weaknesses. This is one moment you have to be objective as these factors may jeopardize your business if it is not disclosed. Often than not, many organization do not see their weaknesses as they are contented with what they have or achieved. However, for the purpose of SWOT Analysis for Strategic Planning, you need to pull out as many weaknesses as opposed to your competitors so that you can make improvement to them in order to faced with competitive challenges.

Some of you may be objective in this exercise and able to list a long list of items as weaknesses which is a good start. But the fact is that your weaknesses may not have any impact to your business if they are not as bad when compared with your competitor. If this is the case, you can park the item as lesser priority for improvement. Below are some example of not obvious weaknesses of a business:-

1) Customer perceived quality is poor
2) High internal rejects
3) Long order lead time
4) Price is high
5) Short Credit terms
6) Lesser product models
7) High employee turnover

You notice that I could make a long list of weaknesses fairly easily. This is quite natural as our minds are full of negative thoughts anyway. However, not to be too worry about it at this stage as the process is to identify as many Internal weaknesses as you could.

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SWOT External Factors – Opportunities

Opportunities is one of the two external factors in the SWOT. It is placed in one of the four quadrant in  the SWOT Template. It refers to elements that has an impact to your business. These elements has influence to the market and customer of your niche. It is not an opportunities in general term such by by improving something, you get something else as you may fall into this common practice.

How to identify opportunities? In the internet business, there are frequent changes to the business landscape to such as extent that keep alive in the Internal Business is really a great challenge. Change Create Opportunities and which is true if you take it positively. However it will be interesting to identify those opportunities for some are quite obvious but some are not easy to realized. Below is a list of obvious opportunities in the internet business:

1. General awareness and accessibility of Internet is increasing in 3rd world countries
2. Emerging of new Internet Tools such as Click Per Action program ( CPA )
3. New product launch by top Internet Market or author
4. More top Internet Marketer promote their JV program
5. More free membership sites are developed by top Internet Marketers as a way to recruit members by providing freebies

The above examples of opportunities are some new Internet market that you may take it as a competition. In fact, it is competitive in nature but open up another new market for you to take part to gain more business. In order for you to see these items as an opportunities, you need to be open about it and evaluate its impact to the market as well as to you. If it can provide value add to you market or customer group, then you can make use of it as an opportunities.

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Top 6 SWOT Analysis Software for Small Business:

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MATCHWARE

MatchWare is a leading provider of professional Mind Mapping software. Perfect for education, project management, collaboration, and brainstorming. Create a SWOT Analysis with ease using MindView, a leading SWOT analysis software tool. Download it for Free.

CREATELY

Spend less time drawing and more time analyzing, Quickly draw SWOT diagrams using our powerful SWOT analysis tool.

SMARTDRAW

SmartDraw’s SWOT analysis software saves you time and produces better-looking results than other strategic planning programs.

VISUAL-PARADIGM

VP Online features a web-based SWOT Analysis software that allows you to easily and quickly develop a SWOT Analysis model by using Visual InfoArt. You can focus on listing out the information in bullet points. InfoArt will automatically form a SWOT Matrix based on the information you provided.

LUCIDCHART

Make better business decisions with Lucidchart’s SWOT analysis generator. We make it easy to get feedback from every department and put together a thorough and actionable analysis.

SWOTANALYSIS

SWOT Analysis – Brainstorm Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats together online. Make phenomenal decisions with our easy to use online SWOT software and gallery of SWOT Analysis examples.

SWOT Analysis Threats is one f the worst events in Internet Business like any other businesses. How do you deal with the threats when it finally realized in your Internet Business? How do you mitigate it to an extend that it does not hurt your business and future growth?  Below are some tips that are derived from my own Internet Business. I also included some important points to for you to understand how SWOT Analysis Threats are identified.

How SWOT Analysis Threats can be identified?

Firstly, in most cases, threats in Internet Business are external factors and beyond your own control. However, having said that, you still need to find a way to identify them because it is detrimental to your own business profitability and future growth.  Below are some source of information about threats to Internet Business:-

1. Subscribe to Internet News from search engines, your hosting company and pay attention to news that may have impact to your internet business. It is not easy as it normally do not have direct indication as a Threat.
2. Join forum – and be an active member. Search for similar topics and see how the members response. Evaluate them and compare that with your own internet business for its impact.
3. Join websites like yahoo answer, answer dot com and look for such question in their questions section.  Ask the question yourself if you can’t find any
4. Collate your own problem encountered so far and collect similar information from friends. Do an evaluation and confirm whether those problem constitute to be a threat to your own Internet Business

How to mitigate SWOT Analysis Threats

Ideally, your should totally eliminate any threats to your Internet Business. If you can’t, then you have to think of a way to mitigate or reduced its impact when it really happen to you. It is better be prepared than sorry later.

“TAKE PRECAUTION” maybe the most appropriate action to take for you to mitigate any threats to your own Internet Business. And to do it effectively,  you need to use the SWOT Analysis Matrix. What you need to avoid is get into other problem while trying to prevent threats from happening. Therefore, instead of looking at the threat in isolation, you need to look at SWOT Analysis Threats holistically. Always refer back to the SWOT Analysis Threats together with other SWOT factor like those stated in the table.

Tips to Mitigate SWOT Analysis Threats

Below are some common tips to mitigate SWOT Analysis Threats to your Internet Business. While it may be a long list but you need to screen them to suit your own purpose.

1. Avoid using one hosting company if you have multiple websites or blogs
2. If you can afford, use a paid hosting. If you ever use free hosting, pick those reputable companies such as blogger or wordpress ( note: this companies are my own evaluation and I do not guarantee they are reliable. You use them at your own risk )
3. Always back up your website or blog, database, etc. And do it as frequent as you can so that your latest information are backup.
4. Use different company for domain and hosting. If anything wrong the hosting company, you still can transfer the domain to another hosting company and upload your backup data.
5. Do not violate any law of any country and terms and conditions of search engines
6. Do not conduct spamming activities.
7. If you depends on search engine ranking, always keep your website listing on top 10 of the search engine listing
8. Use multiple traffic generation to your website such as article marketing, list building, email marketing, social networking etc to overcome your website being sandbox by search engine.
9. Have multiple source of income to your website. If you use CPC as an income source, look out for other source of income such as CPA, Textlink, Affiliate Marketing etc

In summary, every business has its own threats though some are small and short term while some are major and has long term effect to the business. While you want to total eliminate them, the best solution is to take preventive action so that you do not suffer any loss during any recovery. Look at the SWOT Analysis Threats closely and do your best to mitigate it.