CONSIDERATIONS WITHIN A SITUATION ANALYSIS

To be effective, situation analysis needs to be thorough. It should look at your business from a
variety of perspectives. Here are some of the key perspectives that go into situation analysis. As
you perform situation analysis, you should consider:
 Here we are dealing with the product (the good or services). In this instance it might be
helpful to define “product” as all the ways you meet your customers’ needs. As you
evaluate your current product, remember to also include any additional services you
provide customers. Whether the customer service is effectively satisfying the customer’s
expectations.
 Competitive situation: Situation analysis wouldn’t be complete without performing
some form of competitor analysis. Your marketing strategy and business plan should
always take competitors into consideration, and to do that, you’ll have to analyze where
your competitors stand.
 Distribution situation: How do you bridge the gap between product and customers?
This could be via apps, physical stores, which leads to distribution situation. Your
distribution mechanism can make or break your business. Including it in your situation
analysis can help you identify ways to better reach, engage, and retain customers. 
 Environmental factors: You might not expect it, but environmental factors can be both
internal and external. Internal environmental factors might include poor inter-company
communication or changes in leadership and structure. External environmental factors are
often wide-reaching: economic recessions, legal restrictions, etc. Stimulus checks are a
timely example of an external environment factor. 
 Opportunity and issue analysis: As you consider each of the previous situations, you’ll
likely begin to identify your business’s strengths and weaknesses, and with those,
opportunities and threats. To formalize and document this process, you should conduct
SWOT analysis with your team.

SWOT ANALYSIS
When it comes to strategic analysis, SWOT charts are key for this process. SWOT is an acronym
that stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunity, and threats. As you perform SWOT analysis,
you’ll think about your business from each of those standpoints and document your findings on a
SWOT chart—four quadrants corresponding to each part of the acronym.

PESTEL ANALYSIS
Just like SWOT, PESTEL is an acronym. Each letter corresponds to a category of external
factors that might influence your business: political, economic, social, technological,
environmental, and legal factors:
 Political factors: This deals with how government policies or trading restrictions are
impacting your business.
 Economic factors: This deals with how the economic recession or boom is affecting
your business.
 Social factors: This deals with how social trends or the demographic of the market
affects the business.
 Technological factors:  This deals with any legislation on new technology or
technological advances are impacting the organization.
 Environmental factors: This deals with how environmental regulations are affecting the
organization positively or negatively.
 Legal factors: How any legal changes in the law are affecting your organization falls
under legal factor.
In PESTEL analysis, you consider how your business is impacted by each category of factors in
turn. Record your findings on a PESTEL chart.

VRIO Analysis 
If you’re trying to identify competitive advantages, VRIO analysis is the tool for the job. VRIO
analysis is a method for evaluating your resources and the competitive advantages (or
disadvantages) they give you. In VRIO analysis you consider a resource from four perspectives:
a) If it is valuable
b) If it is rare
c) If it is imitable
d) If the organization is organized to use it
The VRIO diagram, like SWOT and PESTEL charts will help in visualizing your information
and make work easier.

HOW TO CONDUCT SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS

STEP 1: IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM
At other times, it may be necessary for an organization itself to identify the broad issue that
needs to be addressed in a particular geographic area. To do so, review existing demographic
data, survey results, study findings and any other available data to identify the priority issue.
STEP 2: DEVELOP A PROBLEM STATEMENT
To develop a problem statement, it may be helpful to first have all of the team members state the
problem in their own words. Then, as a group, write a clear one- to two-sentence problem
statement that reflects the team’s common understanding and that can guide the data collection
and analysis on that specific health issue.
STEP 3: DRAFT A SHARED VISION
A vision provides a picture of what the situation will look like when the organization achieves its
objectives through the various efforts and interventions. A good vision statement provides
direction, communicates enthusiasm and fosters commitment and dedication. A good vision
should:
 Be Ambitious - go beyond what is thought likely in the near term.
 Be Inspiring and Motivating - call to mind a powerful image that triggers emotion and
excitement, creates enthusiasm and poses a challenge.
 Look at the big picture - give everyone a larger sense of purpose.

STEP 4: CONDUCT A DEST REVIEW

To better understand and address the problem, the team needs to conduct a desk or literature
review. To start this process, review the vision and problem statements and divide them up into
concepts. Develop a list of keywords related to those concepts. Brainstorm additional synonyms
and related keywords for each concept. These keywords will be the search terms used to find
relevant literature.
STEP 5: DECIDE THE SCOPE OF THE REVIEW
Determine how many studies and how comprehensive the review should be. Decide on the dates
for the data, the studies to be collected and the best databases to focus the search. Decide
whether the review will include only peer review literature or will expand into grey literature.
STEP 6: IDENTIFY THE RELEVANT INFORMATION
This can be done by using the keywords to look for literature that fits the scope of the review.
Including the qualitative and quantitative data about the problem and the parties affected.
STEP 7: REVIEW AND ORGANIZE THE DATA
Focus only on information that will help the project team address the problem and avoid
including information that is not as relevant for your organization. Organize and summarize the
findings in a way that makes them easy to us.
While reviewing the data, organize the studies that contain information on potential audiences
for the organization. Some studies provide information on what people think, feel and do about
the problem, what influences their behavior and the communication channels they use. Capture
this information for use in the audience analysis.
A desk review is complete when no new information is discovered and the articles introduce
similar arguments, methodologies, findings, authors and studies. Write a list of questions that are
not adequately answered in the available data and questions that arise from the data.  These are
gaps that stakeholders might be able to address during a stakeholder workshop.
STEP 8: ANALYSE THE DATA AND SUMMARIZE THE FINDINGS
Look closely at the information collected. Determine the commonalities and conflicts among the
studies. Decide if the information is valid and important in addressing the health issue. A good
way to summarize the findings is to write a situation analysis report, which can be shared with
the larger project team and relevant stakeholders.
STEP 9: FILL THE EXISTING GAPS
Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with members of potential audiences can help
fill any information gaps that remain after the desk review. One way to fill gaps is to hold
a stakeholder workshop. Other ways to fill gaps include holding in-depth review and focus
groups with key informants or potential audience members; and conducting facility surveys.