A SWOT analysis compiles a company’s or an individual’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats into a single table for better decision-making. In addition, using SWOT analysis templates allows you to finish the studies more quickly. For actionable insights, businesses turn to data-driven decision-making. When introducing a new product or resolving business operations performance issues, one such approach is to conduct a SWOT analysis. Please continue reading about the theory, its cases, and online resources that simplify the assessment process.
What Exactly Is SWOT Analysis?
Businesses and people may use a systematic and visual framework for strategic planning and decision-making roadmaps. Such a visual framework needs both internal and external data inputs for appropriate assessment. Once completed, the assessment offers a clear picture of the assessee’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, which might be a business or a person. SWOT analysis is the name given to this framework.
Fact-based inputs and realistic data are required for an error-free SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis team should avoid internal biases, grey areas, and preconceived notions about the issue (company or individuals) under consideration. SWOT analysis is used to discover the weaknesses of people or businesses and which threats or competitors may make things tough in the market. It also highlights strengths and opportunity areas that may be used to overcome challenges in business, professional, or personal life.
SWOT Analysis Importance
Businesses perform a SWOT analysis on a regular analysis before making investment decisions or changing current business operations. When done properly and without prejudice, the analysis exposes the external and internal factors that might fuel the development of any new or current project. For example, internal factors such as the company’s strengths and weaknesses may swiftly rectify if the fault lines are identified. Similarly, you may move quickly to seize any business opportunity or proceed with caution on a road where your opponent is fundamentally strong. External factors include opportunities and competitors/threats. Using a SWOT analysis template makes doing this study a breeze. Here are some of the reasons why you should perform this analysis for businesses or personal brands:
Decision Making And Strategic Planning
You get the most out of the study if you perform it with a certain decision or strategy in mind. Do the assessment to determine, for example:
1 – Determine if the business requires certain technology.
2 – Developing a strategy to meet changes in market patterns.
3 – Whether to invest in a whole new service or product line.
Addressing Internal Issues
A SWOT analysis of the company’s various departments might mitigate you in mitigating the following issues:
1 – Performance and efficiency of operations
2 – Organizational framework.
3 – Human resources.
4 – Business image.
Aside from the use cases mentioned above, the most apparent app of this assessment system is to leverage your company’s strengths by finding and displaying them. Then, Brainstorm on threats and weaknesses to find alternatives or mitigate issues to establish a successful path for your company’s future. Because SWOT analysis is so popular among professionals and businesses, several IT companies provide ready-to-use blueprints. Update them online, download them, and share them with your team or board for further analysis. Here are a few examples of popular sources or SWOT Templates:
8+ Best SWOT Analysis Templates You Can Use
SWOT Analysis Templates you can use in 2022.
1. Aha
Aha is a well-known brand of product development software. It offers free business strategy roadmap resources such as SWOT analysis templates in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint file formats. Aha offers several SWOT analysis formats, including the 22 basic matrices, top-down, competitive comparison, and growth strategy. However, unlike Canva, there is no graphical user editor to personalize these formats. Instead, download the templates you want and open the files using appropriate software such as PowerPoint or Excel. As a result, you can quickly change the file and present it to the audience in a familiar setting.
2. Canva
Canva is a famous online graphic design tool that offers various business analysis templates. SWOT analysis is one of these Canva templates. Its ready-to-edit templates are available in various designs, depending on the survey you want to conduct. While Canva has some free templates in this area, most professional-looking or complex formats are either paid or pro. As a result, if you want a credible SWOT analysis format for business reasons, you will require a Canva premium subscription. You may build on the free templates and alter them with the Canva editor. Its Elements collection has a variety of graphical elements that you can use to make free templates appear more professional and business-ready. The free plan lets you download JPEG and PDFs downloads of your designs.
3. TemplateLab
It is a high-quality source for business, real estate, personal, and legal document templates. Under the business template part of our portal, you can find many sorts of SWOT analysis formats. Currently, the website offers more than 20 professional SWOT study formats. The most popular SWOT analysis templates are for businesses, careers, finance, hospitality & hotel, human resources, product or service marketing, retail, and academic institutions. Unfortunately, TemplateLab does not have any online editors that you may use to personalize the templates. Instead, you can get these templates for free in various formats, including Docx for Word, PDF, and PPTX for PowerPoint.
4. Visual Paradigm
Another popular online graphic design tool is Visual Paradigm. Its tools are focused on creating infographics and logical diagrams. It provides a few free SWOT analysis templates as part of its diagramming product. The ability to use the templates for free without creating an account is a unique feature of this tool. As a result, Visual Paradigm is great if you do not want to give your personal information. Instead, you may download a high-quality picture of your SWOT study in JPEG, PNG, PDF, and SVG formats. Its templates provide pre-populated data for various business use cases such as Tesla, Amazon, Nike, Coca-Cola, and others. In addition, personal and general formats may be used for non-business reasons.
5. Slide Hunter
Many Microsoft PowerPoint users use Slide Hunter to find professional, high-quality presentation templates. You can also find some decent and free SWOT analysis templates in its PowerPoint template collection. Though the portal promises to provide free templates, you will undoubtedly be required to enter some personal information to download the files. The portal will prompt you for a social network (LinkedIn and Twitter) or email-based (Google account) login upon download. The downloaded file is in PPTX format, which is entirely compatible with PowerPoint. As a result, you can easily update, publish, and present your SWOT analysis from PowerPoint. The good news is that you don’t have to learn a new software interface to make changes.
6. Beautiful.ai
Beautiful.ai is gaining popularity as an online and easy PowerPoint alternative. Aside from being a sophisticated slideshow builder, it includes a large template library of helpful business documents, one of which is the SWOT study template. Its template collection is currently in the works, as it only offers a few SWOT survey templates. Despite the restricted number of templates, you may use Beutiful.ai’s very detailed slideshow editor to use the changes you want. Its editor has various design elements that you may use, such as color palettes, layouts, shapes with text placeholders, and so on. The online tool provides 14 days of free content access, excluding pro content and features. You may also export your design in JPEG format during the free trial.
7. Creately
Creately is a well-known online whiteboard app that integrates databases and collaborative work. As part of the whiteboard function, the tool allows you to construct complicated flow charts and diagrams, including SWOT analysis charts. If you want to save time and are willing to find an existing template, this tool has enough. First, look for the template area once you’re in the Creately whiteboard or editing tool. Then, search for SWOT in the template collection to find some ready-to-edit designs. The SWOT templates for strategic planning, human resource management, and scenario analysis are available in the library. After you’ve finished editing, you may save them in PDF, JPEG, or PPTX format.
8. PresentationGo
PresentationGo offers high-quality infographic designs whenever you need them. But did you know that the portal also provides SWOT analysis examples in PPTX (PowerPoint) format? That’s correct! These templates are available for free with a single click. Unlike other free template portals, PresentationGo does not need personal information from you. Its portal, however, contains extremely few templates. Instead, each template file has its own set of terms and conditions. These templates are free for commercial, educational, and personal usage with credit. You may not, however, sell or distribute these templates as your content.
9. Wordtemplatesonline
If you need excellent SWOT study templates in Word Docx format, you could also look at Wordtemplatesonline. It has long been recognized as a trustworthy business and real estate portal provider. It is now providing free and customizable SWOT templates. However, you cannot alter the formats online since this is a template-only portal. To modify and publish the file, you must first download and open it in Microsoft Word. Nevertheless, Wordtemplatesonline is a useful source of templates since file downloads do not need a login.
Final Thoughts:
So far, you’ve learned about SWOT analysis and received free templates if you need to conduct a comparable survey for your brand. This procedure generates high-quality data regarding your company’s health and strategic status.