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Conducting an effective SWOT analysis of your business
October 16, 2009
A SWOT analysis can be very useful in long-term planning for any small business loan. It consists of candidly examining your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It is important to involve a representative of all stakeholders in this analysis, as various viewpoints will help in making this analysis of your working capital both more accurate and more helpful in business loan planning. All involved in the process must remember that candor and honesty are key elements to ensuring that this analysis will be useful in the future.
A SWOT analysis can be very useful in long-term planning for any small business loan. It consists of candidly examining your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It is important to involve a representative of all stakeholders in this analysis, as various viewpoints will help in making this analysis of your working capital both more accurate and more helpful in business loan planning. All involved in the process must remember that candor and honesty are key elements to ensuring that this analysis will be useful in the future.
It is important to understand that the strengths and weaknesses are internal to the company, whereas the opportunities and threats in your credit card processing merchant services are external and attributed to your outside environment.
Your strengths and weaknesses may be concerned with your company’s working capital resources, whether those resources are related to human resources or talent, finances, intellectual property like patents or trademarks, or other resources. They may be related to your distribution network, your product sourcing capabilities or your product development process.
Opportunities and threats facing your small business could be related to industry events such as consolidation, takeovers, mergers or buyouts, specific competitor actions (such as bankruptcy, patent expiration or failed product launch), overall market and economic factors, or consumer opinion of the market. Whatever it may be, it is important to remember that both business cash advance opportunities and threats are outside of your company.
After compiling these strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, look at them in terms of what they mean for your business. How can you use and leverage your company’s strengths in order to advance your company? How can you eliminate or at least minimize your weaknesses? How can you take advantage of the opportunities in the marketplace to your company’s benefit, and how can you protect against the threats that you face from your outside environment. Examining and answering these questions will prove crucial to your success as a small business loan.
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