When it comes to the external environment

First and foremost you need to determine the purpose of the SWOT analysis: this could be a product launch, a competitive analysis, or a full strategy. Once you understand the objective, you can explore the analysis with that specific area or project in mind.

To conduct a SWOT analysis, you need to conduct research on internal and external factors that could affect your business or project. To email data do this, gather data from customer feedback, marketing channel performance, market research, or a competitor analysis.

To identify the internal factors that can affect your analysis, examine your company’s strengths and weaknesses. Some of the elements and tools you can use are:

• Value chain: Use this to analyze how your company creates value at each step of operations, from inbound logistics to after sales service. This helps you identify strengths in efficiency or innovation, and weaknesses in cost or execution.
• Product line: This helps you evaluate the range, performance, and market fit of your products or services. Is your product line basic internet connection parameters strong and diversified so it is a strength, or is it outdated and underperforming, indicating a weakness?
• Core competencies: This analysis helps you identify what your company does uniquely well such as proprietary technology, specialized expertise, strong brand equity, etc. The goal is to look for the competencies that provide strategic value and support competitive positioning, essentially counting as a strength, and the needed but lacking competencies that could count as a weakness.
• Competitive advantage: Used to assess the attributes that allow your company to outperform rivals, such as cost leadership, differentiation, or customer loyalty. The lack of a clear advantage can be a critical internal weakness.
• Resource: Examine tangible and intangible assets, including financial capital, human talent, intellectual property, and organizational culture. Strengths arise from well-developed resources, while gaps or misalignments highlight vulnerabilities counting as weaknesses.
• 7-S framework: Use this strategic analysis to review the alignment between strategy, structure, systems, shared values, skills, style, and staff. Misalignment among these elements can expose internal weaknesses, while coherence supports organizational strength and agility.

When it comes to the external environment, you’ll need to look at what’s happening at a country or regional level, industry level, and market level.

A PESTLE whatsapp aumber analysis is the go-to framework for this type of analysis as it gives deep insight into the general business environment. This graphic below shows what to consider in each of the categories.

Here are a few examples of opportunities and threats to give you an idea of what to include.

Opportunities:

• Competitors are not focusing on specific market segments (which you can try to target)
• New banking security initiatives indicate growing consumer confidence in online shopping and e-commerce
• An expected decrease in consumer spending and disposable income due to the economic downturn
• Major competitors are adopting a new marketing technology that will see them enhance their messaging and cut promotional costs

You can also use a model like Porter’s Five Forces to look at specific factors that affect your industry. And you can finish off your external analysis by looking directly at what your competitors are doing..