You work for a consulting firm whose primary objective is to help businesses improve their strategic operations. Your firm recently was hired by a newspaper company named Hoosier Media Inc. The client

Create a SWOTT table summarizing your findings. Your environmental analysis should consider, at a minimum, the following factors. For each factor, identify the one primary strength, weakness, opportunity, threat, and trend, and include it in your table.

• External forces and trends considerations:

• • Legal and regulatory

  • Global

  • Economic

  • Technological

  • Innovation

  • Social

  • Environmental

  • Competitive analysis

• Internal forces and trends considerations:

• • Strategy

  • Structures

  • Processes and systems

  • Resources

  • Goals

  • Strategic capabilities

  • Culture

  • Technologies

  • Innovations

  • Intellectual property

  • Leadership

Write a synopsis of no more than 1,050 words in which you analyze relevant forces and trends from the list above. Your analysis must include the following:

Skinny Girl is an app, website and a blog to assist clients of 24 hr. fitness in overall aftercare and healthy wellbeing. The SWOTT analysis presented in this paper will analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and trends that the company is facing in the modern business climate. These forces are separated into two distinct groups, which include internal and external factors. The external factors affect Skinny Girl, Inc. outside of the organization’s control like the competition within the market and regulatory issues. Internal factors are those that occur within the organization, such as innovation and management structure. The goal of performing the SWOTT analysis is to evaluate and discover information that will be useful in the strategic plan development.

External Forces and Trends

Skinny Girl, Inc. must contend with a variety of external forces and trends that affect the strategic choices. The most important factors to be considered are the regulatory and legal issues. This app, webpage and blog are technology driven by the development of intellectual property and it is essential to have some type of copyright protection. There is also the need of protecting the privacy of our customers. Expensive class action lawsuits against Skinny Girl, Inc. could stem, due to the failure to protect consumer privacy. In the near future it would be essential for Skinny Girl, Inc. to access in the workings of a legal team who is capable of dealing with the constant flow of regulatory issues or changes that may rise and its importance to the company as a whole.

Internal Forces and Trends

Skinny Girl, Inc. has had much success in building an impressive organizational culture. The company has made great strides in recruitment of highly trained software designers and engineers who are able to build and maintain the software applications and system. Many of the first people onboard continue to serve within the company in one facet or another. For growth and improvement in leadership in the future, the company will need to strengthen its reach to the younger generation of people interested in health, fitness and wellbeing. This will create a considerable increase in the effectiveness of the leadership team.

Skinny Girl, Inc. has shown an exceptional ability to adapt to change. As a whole there are continual contingencies of what can be altered on the website and app to be a more effective service. Skinny Girl, Inc. business model is built on innovation and staying on top of it means constant changes within this fast paced and ever changing industry of fitness. In summary, the SWOTT analysis provides the foundation that can and will be used in the future to develop future strategic initiatives.

SWOTT Table

This SWOTT analysis is the breakdown of external and internal trends and forces that exist within Skinny Girl, Inc. operational surroundings.

Major Issues and Opportunities

Organizational strategies are the means through which companies accomplish their missions and goals. Successful strategies address these five elements of the setting within which Skinny Mate, Inc. operates and when used by 24 hr. Fitness and Skinny Mate, Inc. in collaboration, can gain competitive advantage. It is a company’s audit of internal workings. Environmental or external workings are to be looked outside of the organization to determine the threats and opportunities, which there is less control.

Based on the analysis, Skinny Mate’s company characteristics as in strength can also be a weakness if the company does not follow though well in communication or is sloppy in delegation. In addition, some opportunities may be anticipated, and others may arise unexpectedly and this can be limiting if the staff is not prepared for it. The increased usage of the internet has provided numerous opportunities for storage of information and growth for the fitness app, website and blogs.

Limitations of a SWOTT Analysis

Skinny Mate, Inc. found that there could be limitations on a SWOTT analysis, For example, what if a strength identified by the company is not truly a strength. For example, at Skinny Mate, Inc., the company believes that the customer service is strong, but maybe no one is aware of real problems with employees or maybe they are not realizing the capabilities of other companies that can provide a higher level of customer service. 
Depending on the company what may be an opportunity to some may appear to be a threat to others. Opportunities may be identified long after they have been exploited and may be easy to overlook while a company may have troubles in anticipating possible threats in order to effectively avoid them. Once strategies are decided upon for the issues facing Skinny Mate, Inc., it has been decided upon to perform periodic updates and frequent monitoring. Skinny Mate, Inc. feels its best served by proactively determining strategies and to address the issues before they become crises within the company.

Conclusion

In the findings for Skinny Mate, Inc. a SWOTT analysis is definitively a first, but critical, step in developing the organizational strategy. By examining the company's internal capabilities—its strengths and weaknesses and its external environment—opportunities and threats, it helps to create strategies that can proactively contend with organizational challenges.

References

Management and the SWOTT analysis. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.reference for business.com/management

Pierce, J., & Robinson, R. (2005). Strategic Management (9th Ed.). Boston, Ma. McGraw Hill.