A Guide to doing a Business Health Check (Part 2)
In the second part of the two-part article on conducting a business health check we continue our discussion on making a SWOT analysis. We start off this second article with the second part of the process:
LOOKING AT THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT
Examine the aspects, characteristics, trends and issues that are based outside of your business, the various Opportunities and Threats that the business will be exposed to, are identified.
What business managers should do is to take full advantage of the opportunities to their business and try to avoid the threats – if possible, even turning them into a business advantage. Very often, because of a shift in perspective, a threat can be transformed into an opportunity.
Start your discussions with your management team by brainstorming each one of the critical areas in your business – these are the aspects that are external to the business. These should revolve around certain key areas:
- Competition
- Industry
- Technology
- Customers
- Shareholder circumstances
- General business environment
For each single one of these key areas you should then discuss its current state, the foreseeable trends, and the impact it will have on the business. Having done this, discuss each one of the issues and determine if it is an opportunity or a threat and determine its importance and priority.
After having made a full analysis of the situation and having agreed on all of the findings you can now move on to the next part of your SWOT analysis.
TACKLING THE INTERNAL ISSUES
You will use the same methodology you have used for the external issues in conducting an analysis of your business’ internal Strengths and Weaknesses.
The most crucial issue that should be tackled here is to measure the relative strength or weakness of your business relative to your competition. You are doing this because the comparative baseline of this analysis are your competitors themselves. Looking at the aspects, characteristics, trends and issues, you must now focus your analysis on these key aspects:
Aspects that relate to your business’ direction
- Vision
- Strategy
- Culture
- Structure
Aspects that relate to your business’ operations
- Products and/or services
-
Sales and marketing
- Inventory and production
- Manpower
- Finance
FINALISATION
Having finished the steps of compiling information and lists, discussing key areas and prioritising the various issues that relate to the business you must now take a look at how many high priority issues you have identified. Ask your management team to discuss each issue to determine what actions you should take, to whom should certain tasks be delegated and assigning responsibility to certain individuals. You should also determine the time frame and remind each individual who has a role to report back their specific progress to the management team regularly.
|
|
Categories:
Business Issues
Business Plan
Countries
Finance
Marketing
Start up
Strategies
Taxation
Technology
Back |
