In order to maximize opportunities from SWOT Analyses, analysts and business leader must be bold, alert, honest, innovative, and risk oriented in a dynamic market that changes by the hour at times.
However SWOT Analyses must be done to first determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that are constantly impacting on the business.
Quality time must be spent analyzing information obtained for relevance, consistency, and accuracy. Honesty regarding the true position must be established before going forward as this is the foundation that the strategy of maximizing opportunities will be built on.
The assets a business owns should not be viewed solely from the financial aspect only but in a holistic way embracing human resources, percentage capital utilization, future revenues and market forecast potential.
Information generated can be used to conduct simulations regarding future earnings from worst case and best case scenarios to help determine the most appropriate opportunities to pursue.
Weaknesses should be fairly reported in order to allow analyst and business managers the opportunity to relate them with the opportunities under consideration to see if both can be pursued simultaneously.
The weaknesses can then be reduced or eliminated with the opportunities pursued to possible improve the level of profitability overall.
A company can reduce its weakness of high debt to equity ratio by selling one of its cash cow subsidiaries, and generate more financial leverage which may enable it to enter multi-million dollar markets in areas devoid of competitors.
Maximizing Opportunities from SWOT Analyses can be further enhanced by proper and timely use of market intelligence to identify threats in the market place.
Information on the products and company images, prices, quality, geographical market demands, customer satisfactions, effectiveness of strategies, and the availability of the company services and products in comparison to its competitors, should be constantly accessed and made available to the market analyst on a timely basis.
This will place the organization in a proactive position to constantly re-think it strategies to match the changing needs and lifestyles of the consumers.
Consumers who sees the company constantly responding to their needs will develop a greater levels of brand loyalty to the products and services, and will be much more responsive to new products being introduced.
The greater the levels of customers responding to innovative products and services, the lower the risks company will face when embarking in new markets opportunities.
Companies who failed to maintain the level of market vigilance necessary to compete, may lose its competitive edge and end up on the scrap heap of obsolescence.
IBM and General Motors are examples of companies who had excellent products but failed to use market intelligence to maintain dominance.
IBM thought it was supplying everything its customers needed and had no need to pay attention to the competition.
They were wrong and folded leaving many engineers out of jobs. General Motors lost the Ford Taurus product line in 2007 after doing fantastic reverse engineering to develop it in the 1980's.
Reverse engineering is always a threat to every successful product on the market and companies must realize that their strengths can change overnight when competitors get hold of their products and take it apart for manufacturing information.
Companies competing in the Interactive Age where information is at our fingertips and change is a major constant, must be constantly vigilant in handling all factors of the SWOT Analyses and using them to chart courses to maximize all financially viable opportunistic markets envisioned.
Opportunities must therefore not be chosen in isolation but inputs from all variables should be included in order to execute the best strategy going forward.
A cooperate approach of this nature would be ideal for the organization as the expert knowledge from all areas will become available for leadership to draw upon to make informed decisions that leads to and maintains market dominance.
Success gained in on period should not be seen as a time to relax because the possibility of a constantly changing market to destroy years of gain in a very short time is always a threat.
In going forward therefore, opportunities should be constantly sought and maximized during all periods of a company's operation regardless of its current financial successes.
