Business analysis process: Techniques to ensure a continued business presence
Do you know what your position in the market and industry is?
You definitely should.
Knowing your position is an effective way of identifying problems and possible solutions in your operating environment. Ignoring the factors that are investigated in business analysis, as you'll see with HMV as you read on, might destroy your business.
The business analysis process is essential for an organization to optimize its skills. Business analysis is a way of identifying business needs, problems it is going through, and the solutions available. As a business, it is necessary to review and analyze the company from different angles to ensure your continued presence in the foreseeable future.
The four most common business analysis tools are:
1. SWOT Analysis
2. MOST
3. PESTEL
4. CATWOE
These tools are applicable in varying situations, so let's look at them one by one.
SWOT Analysis
You've probably heard about this one multiple times. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A SWOT analysis looks at the above internal and external factors influencing a company.
Strengths are the unique resources in your business that serve as an advantage in business operations. Weaknesses are adverse factors that pull the business back. The strengths and weaknesses relate to market share, company culture, products, and so on. A world-renowned brand such as Coca-Cola has a diversified portfolio of drinks as one of its top strengths. In turn, one of Coca-Cola's weaknesses is a lack of product diversification compared to its top competitor, Pepsi. Do you see how interesting it can be to investigate these factors?
Opportunities are the chances that your business can take advantage of to improve its operations. For example, referring back to Coca-Cola, product diversification is an opportunity that it can exploit. Threats are the external risks that may adversely affect business. Threats require a robust mitigation strategy.
SWOT Analysis is one of the most popular tools in all business sizes because it can be used at any point in time in a business or project and provides essential insight. SWOT analysis is as necessary as financial statements and should be done just as often.
MOST Analysis
MOST stands for mission, objectives, strategies, and tactics. This analysis tool identifies the purpose of the business, the key goals that will help it achieve the mission, the options available to achieve the objectives and the actions that will be taken to implement the strategies.
It's easy to get carried away by daily operations and forget the guiding mission. The MOST analysis steps in to save your day in this regard. This analysis ensures every business activity is carefully focused on the business mission.
PESTEL Analysis
It would be nice to operate in a perfect vacuum, wouldn't it? Unfortunately, every business is affected by external environmental factors that it has to be aware of. PESTEL analysis addresses these factors: political, social, economic, technology, environmental, and legal. The opportunities and threats identified by PESTEL analysis are a crucial part of strategic planning.
HMV, a UK-based music retailer, ignored its PESTEL factors and erroneously relied on its past success and longevity. Newer companies like Spotify exploited the evolving social and technological elements to create a profitable business and took over HMV's market. A company cannot realistically strategize for the future without a frank awareness of the PESTEL aspects that will affect it.
CATWOE Analysis
Sometimes it helps to gain insight into a problem before attempting to solve it. CATWOE stands for customers, actors, transformation, world view, owners, and employees. After identifying all of the issues related to each factor in the CATWOE analysis, your solutions will be more comprehensive. CATWOE works particularly well when applied to a specific context in your business.
All these analyses may seem overwhelming, and you might not know where and how to start. We've worked with various companies that were stuck; one client said, "I feel like I'm playing stuck in the mud each time I have to deal with an issue in my business." After a consultation with us, their situation has changed drastically.
Have you ever tried applying any of these analyses to your business? What do you think of their usefulness? Feel free to share your thoughts with us!
If you are yet to implement one of these and feel a bit daunted, feel free to get in touch with us.
Here's what we'll do for you:
- Brainstorm with you about your needs and pain points.
- Determine the best tools for your business needs, goals, and objectives.
- Determine when these tools need to be used in your business.
- Conduct and visualize the analyses.
- Compare your analyses with that of any available public information of your competitor.
- Advise you based on the results of the analyses.
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