Companies use various business planning tools and frameworks, but none are as simple and evergreen as a simple SWOT analysis one.
It’s a quick and effective way to analyze a company, process, individual, or strategy by looking at important internal and external factors at play.
Given the frequency of use and the number of use cases, it’s smart to have a ready-to-use SWOT analysis template for your business.
Depending on which in-house tools you use, you may need templates for Excel, Word, Nifty, or other such platforms.
In this article, you will find 10 SWOT analysis templates for various platforms. But first, let’s take a deeper look at what SWOT analysis is and how to do it right.
Let’s get started.
What is SWOT Analysis?
SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A SWOT analysis helps you assess a person, company, or idea on these parameters.
Strengths and weaknesses are internal and external factors affecting you that are inherent to the thing or persona being analyzed. Opportunities and threats are external forces that can have positive or negative impacts, respectively.
Let’s understand this with a swot analysis example of a company.
- Strengths: A loyal customer base, profitable business locations, strong balance sheet, or any other strength that gives a business advantage.
- Weaknesses: Weak brand identity, too much debt, and unreliable supply chain partners can be some examples of weaknesses.
- Opportunities: Favorable external factors like business-friendly government regulations or low tax rates are opportunities that can help a business grow.
- Threats: Unforeseen negative factors like a change in regulation, natural disasters, and a sudden increase in raw material costs fall under this category.
The image below explains how you can do a SWOT analysis for your company and the questions you need to ask to fill in the various factors.
What is a SWOT Analysis Template?
In simplest terms, a SWOT analysis template is a ready-to-use framework you can use to conduct an analysis.
An editable SWOT analysis template can help you save time and will avoid the need to create a structure from scratch every time you need to do such an analysis.
As different companies use different tools, from Excel to Google Docs, a single SWOT analysis template won’t suffice for varying needs. That’s why we have compiled a list of the best SWOT analysis templates to cater to different business needs.
10 Free SWOT Analysis Templates
In this section, you will find SWOT analysis templates for Nifty, Google Docs, Excel, and Word. Irrespective of which tool you prefer, you will find a SWOT analysis template that’s perfect for your needs.
Here you go.
1. Nifty SWOT Analysis Template
Nifty is a great project management tool that companies use to streamline their processes. If you want to use it to conduct a SWOT analysis, then this free SWOT analysis template will help.
It’s very simple to replicate and makes use of bulleted lists to fill out the points under each heading. You can modify the “Name of employee” field and make it “company” or anything else that you’re analyzing.
To add more points, you simply need to press enter, and the bulleted list will expand. Simply copy-paste this SWOT template onto a Nifty doc on your dashboard and customize it to conduct a detailed SWOT analysis.
2. Nifty SOAR Analysis Template
SOAR (strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results) is another variant of SWOT analysis that is used for business and strategic planning purposes.
It analyzes a company or individual’s strengths, aspirations, growth opportunities, and ways to measure results or performance.
Here are the questions you need to ask when conducting a SOAR analysis:
- Strengths: What are my core strengths that give me a unique advantage?
- Opportunities: What are some areas of improvement where I can grow?
- Aspirations: What are the future outcomes that I want to achieve?
- Results: How will I measure my performance on my goals?
Here’s a simple Nifty SOAR analysis template that you can use to conduct this analysis.
You can do this for an individual as well as for a company. Simply tweak the editable template and customize it to your needs.
3. Excel SWOT Analysis Template
If you want to conduct a SWOT analysis in Excel, you can replicate the SWOT matrix and use cells to fill out the details.
This SWOT analysis template for Excel, for example, is designed to analyze a business process.
However, you can use this template to analyze a strategy, company, or person, depending on your requirements.
4. Business Planning Excel SWOT Template
Unlike a generic SWOT template, a business planning template solves a specific purpose. It helps you create a task list of activities to be performed when making a business plan within the SWOT framework.
The following business planning SWOT template for Excel provides a perfect example of how you can use the framework to make a business plan.
5. Google Docs SWOT Analysis Template
If you use Google Docs and need a ready-to-use SWOT analysis template for that, the one below will work for you.
This is a simple matrix-style template that can be easily customized as per your requirements.
6. Personal SWOT Analysis Template for Google Docs
A personal SWOT analysis involves assessing a person’s strengths and weaknesses instead of a company’s. The threats and opportunities for an individual would also be entirely different.
If you’re wondering what things you would analyze to conduct a personal SWOT analysis, then the template below can help you.
7. Microsoft Word SWOT Analysis Template
MS Word is another popular platform that companies use for their day-to-day work. If you’re looking for a simple SWOT analysis template for Word, then the template below is perfect for you.
You can simply edit and customize this template or create a similar one in a Word doc with your branding and colors.
8. Microsoft Word Marketing SWOT Analysis Template
If you’re looking for a marketing-specific template for MS Word, check out the one below.
This template not only covers the strengths and weaknesses but goes a step ahead and helps you prepare a marketing action plan based on these. This is a great way to go more in-depth with your own SWOT analysis and use it to make strategic business decisions.
9. Competitor SWOT Analysis Template
A competitor SWOT analysis is a variation of the traditional matric framework, which includes a side-by-side analysis of 2 or more companies.
In this case, you list the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of several companies and do a comparative analysis.
Here’s a great competitor SWOT analysis template that you can use.
It’s designed for Microsoft Excel, but you can recreate a similar template for practically any platform you use.
This is a great template for analyzing your competitors’s strengths and weaknesses and comparing them with your own. This can help you identify the top competitors you need to watch out for.
10. Healthcare SWOT Analysis Template
Looking for a SWOT analysis template specific to the Healthcare industry? The template below can help. You also get a guide on specific items you can add under each category.
Benefits of Using a SWOT Analysis Template
In the previous section, we covered 10 great SWOT analysis templates for various platforms and use cases.
But why should you use one or conduct a SWOT analysis?
Well, here are some reasons for you.
It Helps You Understand Your Current Position
By assessing the strengths and weaknesses of your company, you can determine where your business stands.
This is a good starting point to create a business plan and determine what you want to achieve based on market trends and your current positioning.
You Can Use It to Prioritize Projects
By conducting a SWOT analysis for all planned business projects, you can identify the ones that have the most potential. This can help you prioritize the most valuable ones and focus more time and resources on those.
It’s important to prioritize projects that have strong internal strengths and weaknesses to ensure business growth and minimize risks.
It Leads to Considerable Time Savings
A SWOT analysis is a quick and simple way of assessing how a company or idea is positioned and how much potential it has to achieve success or growth.
As such, using a SWOT analysis template can help you conduct this analysis as many times as you need without starting from scratch. This can save you a lot of time and effort.
It Can Help You Identify Key Competitors
A competitor SWOT analysis can help you assess your competitive position compared with your competitors. You can also use it to identify which companies are your biggest competitors and pose the biggest risk for your business.
Companies that have unique strengths and opportunities are the ones to watch out for. They can position themselves in a way that gives them a competitive advantage.
You Can Use it to Control Risks
One key aspect of a SWOT analysis is identifying weaknesses and external threats. This allows you to be better prepared to deal with challenges and navigate through difficult situations.
By being aware of and prepared for potential risks, you can control and minimize them.
Are There Alternatives to the SWOT Analysis?
There are many marketing analysis and business planning models and frameworks that can act as alternatives to the typical SWOT analysis.
Here are a few that you can try:
- SCORE Analysis: This is a framework that analyzes a business’s strengths, challenges, opportunities, relationships, and efforts.
- PESTLE Analysis: It helps assess external factors that may affect a business, specifically Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal factors.
- SOAR Analysis: This is similar to SWOT but replaces weaknesses and threats with aspirations and results. It is considered a more positive approach to conducting a SWOT analysis.
- NOISE Analysis: This is also similar to SWOT but analyzes needs, opportunities, improvements, strengths, and exceptions to find growth opportunities.
These are just some examples, but there are many SWOT alternatives that you can use, depending on your goals.
Prioritize Your SWOT Analysis using Nifty
There you have it—some of the best templates to conduct a SWOT analysis. You can choose a SWOT analysis template based on the tool you use and your specific business needs.
If you have not tried Nifty, we recommend that you give it a go. It’s a smart project management tool that has a built-in “docs” feature that you can use to create your SWOT framework.
Its simple, easy-to-navigate interface is feature-rich and perfect for conducting a SWOT analysis in a no-fuss, hassle-free manner.
Try Nifty for SWOT analysis. Get Started free.
FAQs
Is There a SWOT Template in Google Docs?
Yes, we have provided a SWOT analysis template for Google Docs, along with those for other similar tools. You can use one of the templates listed in this post or create one of your own to meet your specific business requirements.
What Are the 3 Cs in SWOT Analysis?
Corporation, customer, and competitor are the three C’s that are important in a SWOT analysis. These factors contribute significantly to business success and are considered a critical part of any effective SWOT analysis.
How Do You Conduct a SWOT Analysis?
Here’s a step-by-step process:
- Set a goal for your analysis
- List the strengths of the company, person, or idea you’re analyzing
- List their weaknesses and areas of improvement
- Identify and list the opportunities for growth
- Identify the potential threats that may arise from external factors
- Analyze whether the overall outlook is positive or negative, depending on which factors are stronger—positive or negative
