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SWOT, PESTLE and other models for strategic analysis
Guide
Business analysis models are useful tools and techniques that can help you understand your
organisational environment and think more strategically about your business. Dozens of generic techniques
are available, but some come to the forefront more frequently than others do. These include:

SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis

PESTLE (political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental) analysis
scenario planning
Porter's Five Forces framework

SWOT analysis
SWOT analysis is one of the most popular strategic analysis models. It involves looking at the strengths and
weaknesses of your business' capabilities, and any opportunities and threats to your business.

Once you identify these, you can assess how to:

capitalise on your strengths

minimise the e ects of your weaknesses
make the most of any opportunities
reduce the impact of any threats

See our SWOT analysis example.

A SWOT analysis gives you a better insight into your internal and external business environment. However, it
does not always prioritise the results, which can lead to an improper strategic action.

One way to make better use of the SWOT framework is to consider the customer's perspective when making
strategic plans and decisions. You can do this by applying importance-performance analysis (IPA) to
identify SWOT based on customer satisfaction surveys.

Other strategic analysis tools

In addition to SWOT, other useful techniques include:

PESTLE analysis - a technique for understanding the various external in uences on a business. See our
PESTLE analysis example.
Scenario planning - a technique that builds various plausible views of possible futures for a business.
Critical success factor analysis - a technique to identify the areas in which a business must succeed in
order to achieve its objectives.
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