should a biz plan include swot analysis?

[inbakumar]

Interesting discussion and my personal take is that they are not that important. It is an old fashioned way of looking at an organisation and there are far better methodologies available to devise corporate strategies these days. What perhaps important is that the awareness of these factors by the owners/managers of an enterprise when embarking on strategy formulation than trying to decide whether a certain factor is a strength or a weakness (or indeed a threat or an opportunity).

For supporters of the SWOT analysis, I would like to ask how you would classify catastrophic multi-billion dollar losses like the 9/11 attack on the twin towers for the insurance companies that insured those buildings? Are they a strength, waeakness, opportunity or threat?

Regards,

[peterjhale]

ha - good one Joel

Well as this was an exernal event it would be a threat or an opportunity (as strengths are weaknesses are those areas you control in your business)

If folks had the foresite, they would have listed a terroist attack as a threat - then scored how likely it was, measure the impact etc, and put plans into action if necessary

Although, if they were like the labour government, they could have added it as an opporuntity to bury bad news

[robert05]

Re such things in a SWOT, while agree with peter that it would be the "OT" part of SWOT, I don't think you would want to spend time building into your strategy - bit unpredictable to try and build a business strategy around that!

Re it being an Insurance companies they are probably the only ones that build it into a business plan but that would probably be in the PEST part rather than a SWOT, most firms have some form of business recovery plan as well but that's a tactical (or essential) business activity rather than forming a new strategy. I should imagine gambling business plan have some interesting scenario planning!

Robert

[adpin]

Hi

I recently completed a business studies course and a lot of emphasis was put on SWOT analysis. These are not just paper excercises but can be very beneficial to your business, if done well and can help you plan your strategy and objectives/goals for the business.

Analyse your SWOT analysis and look for any potential market gaps that you may be able to eploit and build these into your strategy, possibly as a long term objective, dependant on the type of business.

Adam

[BrokerSteve]

i've never liked swot ... four box porter style strategy matrices and all that stuff. no offence to porter, he's made a lot of money, but as joel says over the years better ways of looking at business have come along - look at mintzberg and more radically cummings views on strategy.

that said, credit departments in banks - presumeably the main 'client' for your plan will like to see that you have thought about weaknesses in your plan and mitigated them in some way.

i would strongly recommend cummings' 'recreating strategy' to anyone who's been on one of those strict models based 'four boxes' and 'triangles describe businesses' type courses. i was lucky enough to have him lecture on his book which also formed part of his MBA course before he returned to new zealand and it puts some of the rigid, porter 1980s style stuff in a new perspective.

[Sally1]

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http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/swot.htm What is SWOT analysis? What are the main aspects of SWOT analysis? How to write Good SWOT analysis of a company? Where to find information for SWOT analysis?