1. Internal - strengths and weaknesses
Strengths
Strengths are capabilities, skills, assets, traits or resources that give the company a competitive advantage.
• Employees with special abilities, knowledge, training, education, experience etc.
• Management discipline
• Strong relationships with provider, consumers, families etc.
• Financial strength
Some strengths can include reputation, loyal customers, and strong relationships with others. Enduring strengths ought to be the focus of your SWOT analysis.
Make sure and explain why the capability, skill, asset, trait or resource gives the company a competitive edge. Ex.
• six manufacturing plants across the USA ensuring reliable delivery to all customers
• freshest ingredients based on contracts giving us preferred treatment
• employee training programs with a proprietary learning model.
• Staff are equipped with specialized skills and persistence in resource development and research in order to locate better services for consumers.
• Unique perception and views on providing service coordination versus case management allowing for better service delivery.
Weaknesses
Weaknesses, of course, are the opposites of strengths -- the lack of a capability, asset, resource, trait or skill that prevents the company from matching or exceeding the competition in some regard.
Identify real strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes an item is mistaken for a strength (or a weakness) when it is actually evidence of a strength (or a symptom of a weakness). Examples include:
sales level
sales growth
market share or rank
price
cost
profitability
employee turnover.
Note that none of these are a capability, skill, asset, trait or resource. A true strength or weakness is the explanation for the evidence or symptom. An example is high price listed erroneously as a weakness. It might be a symptom of a weakness that raises cost, a symptom of a management weakness, or perhaps a deliberate decision for premium pricing.
Strengths
1. Staff are equipped with specialized skills and persistence in resource development and research in order to locate better services for consumers.
Weaknesses
1. The company is unknown by majority of the community.
Common errors with SWOT analysis>> it is easy to confuse evidence of strengths with real strengths, and symptoms of weaknesses with real weaknesses. A strength is something the organization owns that allows it to stay ahead of the competition, such as a specific asset, resource, capability, skill or trait. Evidence of strengths include high sales, market leadership, low cost, a low price, fast growth, and low employee turnover. These might seem like strengths but are not. The reason why one occurs is a real strength.
Similarly, a weakness is the lack of an asset, resource, capability, skill or trait that gives the competition an edge over us. Symptoms of weaknesses – but not weaknesses themselves – include dropping sales, low market share, high cost or price, slow growth, and high employee turnover.