”The smart-SWOT Bundle is an honorable evolution of the good old SWOT”

Smart-SWOT offers three key improvements over the conventional SWOT analysis: 1) the process is going beyond typical SWOT in order to lead you to actions; 2) smart-SWOT is improving teamwork; 3) it helps you to stay confident in the good quality of your analysis.

1. Action Focused:

While traditional SWOT is simple and fast to fill out, it often ends up as just a completed form with no further action. Smart-SWOT is designed to lead you to actionable insights by adding several steps and tricks:

• TOWS step directs your attention to external factors, which are crucial for your company’s future.
• Prioritization: You’re guided to focus only on the top three items in each SWOT category, helping the clarity and focus on the core.
• Action Recommendations: The final step in smart-SWOT is where you turn insights into strategic actions, ensuring the analysis leads to practical outcomes.

2. Improves Teamwork Quality:

Unlike traditional SWOT, which can involve time-consuming email exchanges and biased group dynamics, smart-SWOT is designed to improve effectiveness of teamwork and help you facilitate workshop both online and face-to-face.

• Don’t lose anyone’s ideas: It includes a step for individual input, ensuring every team member’s perspective is considered.
• More Productive Discussions: With all inputs visible, team discussions start from a more informed standpoint.

3. High quality SWOT – Easy:

The quality of any SWOT analysis is directly linked to the quality of information you input. We made it easy for you to be sure everyone is doing the best job.

• Guidance and Tips: Each step in smart-SWOT includes helpful tips and guidance, removing uncertainty and enhancing your analysis.
• AI Module for External Insights: AI component serves as an outsider to assist you in identifying relevant external factors, a feature traditional SWOT often lacks.

We added a TOWS step to smart-SOWT, in order to produce better quality analysis is focusing on external factors before going to internal. There is a number of research and publications that are advocating the importance of external factors.

1. Michael D. Watkins, in his Harvard Business Review article, advocates for the TOWS analysis, which prioritizes external factors (Threats and Opportunities) before internal ones (Weaknesses and Strengths). He criticizes the traditional SWOT order, suggesting that it leads to a narrower, introspective analysis. Watkins argues for a return to the original intent of the SOFT approach (Satisfactory, Opportunity, Fault, Threat), which also emphasized a balanced approach to analyzing external and internal factors. From SWOT to TOWS: Answering a Reader’s Strategy Question (hbr.org)

2. Understanding External Factors: An article on SimpliMBA emphasizes the crucial role of understanding external factors in SWOT analysis for businesses to navigate their competitive landscape, exploit opportunities, and mitigate threats effectively. A thorough examination of external factors brings depth and valuable insights to SWOT analysis, leading to informed decisions and robust strategic planning. https://www.simplimba.com/15-external-factors-of-swot-analysis

3. External Environment Analysis: The University of Central Florida Libraries’ guide on SWOT analysis discusses external analysis as a key part of the process. This includes customer analysis, competitive analysis, market analysis, and environmental analysis. Such analyses help identify external opportunities, threats, trends, and strategic uncertainties, which are essential for strategic planning https://www.cipd.org/en/knowledge/factsheets/swot-analysis-factsheet/

4. Strategic Importance of External Factors: The Principles of Management guide explains that firms cannot control the general environment’s segments and elements, making it crucial to understand each segment and its implications for strategy. This understanding of external factors is necessary for successful strategy selection and implementation https://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmanagement/chapter/5-7-developing-strategy-through-external-analysis/

For tips and guidance which we incorporated in smart-SWOT we used multiple publications, case studies and years of experience. Here are some commonly researched weaknesses of  SWOT analysis:

• General Perspective, Lack of Depth: SWOT often presents a general perspective with a focus on broad solutions rather than specific details, limiting its effectiveness in dynamic environments​​​​.

• Formulation Challenges: It requires experience for systematic construction and use. Poorly formulated SWOT analyses can lead to ineffective strategies​​​​.

• Bias and Subjectivity: Listing strengths and weaknesses is prone to bias, which can skew the analysis and result in inaccurate conclusions​​​​.

• Categorization Difficulties: Categorizing variables into the four SWOT quadrants can be challenging since the same factor can often fit into multiple categories​​​​.

• Lack of Competitive Comparison: SWOT lacks a quantitative basis for benchmarking, making it difficult to evaluate competitive gaps​​.

• Static Nature: It is primarily a static assessment, focusing too much on a single moment in time, which can be limiting in a rapidly changing business environment​​​​.

• Overemphasis on a Single Dimension: SWOT may lead organizations to become preoccupied with a single strength or feature, neglecting other necessary factors for competitive success​​.

Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.

Absolutely! With your purchase, you get a full year’s access to smart-SWOT and all the data you and your team have created. Feel free to re-run the entire process or just parts of it at any point during this year. For your convenience, the most recent data is always shown and included in the report whenever you revisit the process.

Absolutely! You can use smart-SWOT for free as a single user.

All you need to do is to go to the smart-SWOT overview page and create account. After this you have full access to smart-SWOT for 1 year.

As soon as you are sure that you are ready to make SWOT with your team, just buy needed number of licenses and invite your team members by adding their e-mails.

Data Safety and Security at Our Organization

At DigitaBlue, data safety is paramount. We collect various types of data to enhance our services, including organizational metrics, market trends, and user feedback, which are critical for our Consulting Journeys.

We store all collected data in a secure Atlas Mongo database, utilizing AWS Lambda for processing, which adheres to the industry’s best practices for data security. Our commitment to data protection includes robust encryption, strict access controls, and the implementation of cutting-edge firewalls and anti-virus software to guard against unauthorized access and threats.

In compliance with GDPR, we ensure user data is handled with respect for privacy and user rights. We regularly review and update our data safety protocols to align with the latest regulations and technological advances.

Our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use provide transparent insights into how we manage and protect user data. They outline the rights users have over their data, including access, rectification, and erasure.

In the event of a data breach, we have established a clear and effective incident response plan to mitigate risks and inform affected parties as required by law. We also conduct periodic security audits to identify and address potential vulnerabilities.

We believe that employee awareness is key to data safety, hence we conduct regular training sessions to ensure our team is informed about their roles in maintaining data security.

Our use of data is always to improve user experience and operational excellence. We do not share user data with third parties without explicit consent and ensure that strict confidentiality agreements govern all data sharing.

In summary, DigitaBlue’s approach to data safety is comprehensive and adaptive, prioritizing the security and privacy of our users’ data.

Smart-SWOT is free for individual use because you shouldn’t pay if you don’t see its benefits. Using smart-SWOT for free allows you not just to explore its features but also to conduct your own SWOT analysis without any cost.

When you’re ready to engage in SWOT analysis with your team or need to facilitate a workshop, that’s the time to consider paying for additional team member licenses.

smart-SWOT really shines in a team setting:

• It’s user-friendly, making it easy for each team member to provide their best input.
• Everyone’s contributions are displayed at relevant steps, for better focus and efficiency in team discussions.
• All information is securely stored and easily accessible, so you don’t have to waste time searching for it.
• As the host and facilitator of the workshop, smart-SWOT helps you stay organized and appear professional.