SWOT Analysis is a great way that helps your organization to understand different issues arises in the current state and in the upcoming future. This strategic tool gives you a full insight into different aspects of your organizations. When you conduct SWOT analyses of your company, simply pen down your company key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats comprise in your business environment. If SWOT analysis weakness are identified in a proper manner, you can be able to improve your company reputation by addressing the faulty areas.
SWOT Matrix that includes four quadrants of internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats. You can simply put the important variable in each category of the SWOT quadrant. Once you complete the task, draw the conclusion and take the necessary steps accordingly.
In my provirus tutorial, I discussed SWOT Analysis Strengths. Today, I will give you a detailed understanding of SWOT Analysis weaknesses.
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SWOT Analysis Weaknesses Definition
In SWOT analysis W stands for weaknesses are those characteristics of a business that gives disadvantage relative to others. Weaknesses are all those things you do not perform well. Swot weaknesses can prevent you from achieving company goals and objectives. Weaknesses are negative and internal factors that affect your organizational successes. Few examples of organizational weaknesses are irrelevant target population, bad factory location, poor financial performance, poor systems that you apply, inexperienced leadership.
Importance of SWOT Weaknesses
You are a hardworking business owner, you work day and night but unable to achieve the mission and objectives of your business. Despite the fact that you tried everything but failed. Upon your friends’ suggestion, you conducted SWOT analysis of your business and find out the key strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that affect your business positively and negatively. This is the point where you know the reasons for business failure.
Now it’s your turn to take accurate decision to get rid of these organizational weaknesses. You have already categorized the variables in swot quadrants. Prioritize the weak areas and try to bring improvements.
Examples of Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis
Here are some examples of weaknesses that will give a better understanding of the swot analysis topic.
Outdated Technology
This is the era of technological advancement. Whether a large corporation or a small business, everyone relies on technology from the accounting system to inventory management and promotional campaigns. Outdated technology can reduce your production capacity as a result business can face high per unit cost. Outdated inventory management software is another example of weakness in SWOT analysis. For example, if you installed an Inventory Management software in 2010. Now it is 2018, and you have successfully expanded your business. At this stage using this software can cause problems and might have storage and retrieval issues. As a result, it requires more time to complete variously related task and affect your inventory records.
Unmotivated Employees
Employees are the assets of any organization. But what if these assets cannot be utilized. You will be unable to achieve your short term as well as long-term objectives of your business. For example, your company is working on a proposal and have to submit it by the end of the day. If you have incompetent employees and unable to fulfill all the requirements in a proper manner you can lose the project due to unavailability of data.
Another good example is the services industry. This is the industry you have to take care and satisfy every customer. An unfriendly staff can ruin your reputation within no time. You can lose your customer right and left for lifetime while having this weakness you should address this issue on priority basis. By this way, you can retain your customers.
Strong Brand Reputation of Competitors
Being a small business owner, you can always face difficulties when completing with large competitors having better brand name and reputation. This is a serious type of weakness because these type competitors have strong and loyal customers base. Due to economy of scale, they can offer their products and services relatively at lower prices. Due to their brand name and brand reputation they always have a larger chunk of market share. Being a business owner you should devise a marketing strategy based on product differentiation.
Online Presence
According to statista.com, in 2017, 1.66 billion people globally purchased online goods, amounting to 2.3 trillion USD. Now this sentence shows the importance of online presence in today’s world. If you don’t have a strong online presence then this is a huge weakness of your business. You don’t have a penny share in more than 2 trillion dollars. You can lose potential customers if your competitors have an online presence having a website and social media account.
Some other examples of SWOT Analysis weaknesses include
- Charges high prices form your customers
- Unethical and unhygienic production line
- Financial instability
- Low marketing budgets to reach customer through advertising and promotional campaigns.
- Unnecessarily complex system and operations
On a serious note, during swot analysis weakness are negative aspects of your organization and can affect your business competing in the market and you will be unable to attain your overall business objectives. Jot them down in a priority list and give them proper attention to turn these weaknesses into strengths.
