How To Create A Strategic Plan For IT: SWOT Analysis?

A SWOT analysis is a high-level strategic planning model that helps organizations identify where they are doing well and where they can improve, both internally and externally. SWOT works because it helps you evaluate your business by considering several factors. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors such as team members, software, and geographic location.

SWOT analysis

Create a SWOT matrix

This is a matrix-like grid that will contain the information you collect. As you can see in the SWOT analysis template below, each quadrant contains one of four elements to focus on Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Using a matrix helps present your findings in a clear and easy-to-understand way.

Gather the right participants

Your entire leadership team should be involved, as they can provide a broad view of the organization and offer insight into the competitive landscape. But having many different perspectives is beneficial, and that means including leaders from each department and anyone else you think might have valuable information.

List your strengths

What makes us better than our competitors.  After considering these questions for your own organization, you may come up with multiple answers in some categories.

Financial weaknesses

All of our destinations are in the US, which may limit our growth. Or we know that a large number of new competitors entering the market is reducing our market share.

Internal opportunities

What processes will drive us into the future if we can improve them? Maybe now is the time to upgrade your booking or pricing system.

Learning and growth opportunities

What opportunities do we have to leverage employees, do we have cross-training opportunities. Could we make a few tweaks to improve our culture and thus our retention.

Identify your potential threats

As a travel-related company in a tough economy, Upward Airlines can uncover a number of potential threats. It could be low-cost competitors, persistent global health issues that hinder travel, or rising oil prices.

Threats to learning and growth

This could be anything from instability in our customer support department to employee departures to suppression of new department-specific technologies.

Examine the connection matrix

Looking at your SWOT matrix, do any of your strengths support naturally identified opportunities. If you remove the weaknesses, would that present other opportunities. Not only is this exercise great for cross-departmental discussion, but it also gives managers an opportunity to consider the views of employees in the field.

Conclusion

A properly executed SWOT analysis is another valuable tool in your toolbox for improving business performance and minimizing future threats and weaknesses.