SWOT analysis

[Former Member]

This document will explain how we can expose a SWOT matrix (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) in a Web Intelligence report.

According to wikipedia definition, SWOT analysis are used in many industries:

SWOT is a structured planning method that evaluates those four elements of a project or business venture. A SWOT analysis can be carried out for a company, product, place, industry, or person.

Here are some examples I picked on internet.

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

First solution: tables

In the first solution we can imagine to display the SWOT data in one or 2 tables but it's quite tricky and the result won’t be elegant.

So we can also consider to create the SWOT report using 4 tables: 1 for S, 1 for W, 1 for O and 1 for T.

All these tables are aligned each other: W is aligned on the right of S, O is aligned on the bottom of S and T is aligned on the left of T and is aligned on the bottom of W.

This solution is elegant if we have the same number of values for each item (like in example 2 above): S, W, O and T.

But if we don’t have exactly the same number of values the tables are not displayed correctly. They keep their alignment but it’s not visually elegant.

Here is an example I created with a number of values different for the SWOT matrix.

As you can notice, the SWOT matrix is not perfect. The main reason is that we cannot set the width and the height of a table.

Second and best solution: charts

So I decided to use charts because we can set the width and the height of a chart.

I decided to choose for each part of the SWOT matrix a bar chart.

And here is the result obtained with bar charts using the same dataset.

Now I will explain how I set the different properties for each part of the SWOT matrix.

The dataset I used contains:

• a column named Characteristic that contains the labels that you can see in the charts
• a column for Strengths
• a column for Weaknesses
• a column for Opportunities
• a column for Threats

The column (S, W, O and T) takes the value 1 if it’s an S, W, O or T else the value is 0.

As you can imagine I don’t need measure in my chart but I need to represent the bars and all the bars must have the same length.

So I created a fake measure through a variable named “One” with formula =1.

So each chart contains the dimension “Characteristic” and the measure “One”.

The “STRENGTHS” chart has a filter: column Strength = 1

The “WEAKNESSES” chart has a filter: column Weakness = 1

1. Etc.

All the charts are aligned each other:

• WEAKNESSES is aligned on the right of STRENGTHS
• OPPORTUNITIES is aligned on the bottom of WEAKNESSES
• THREATS is aligned on the left of OPPORTUNITIES and is aligned on the bottom of WEAKNESSES

Properties:

• Each chart has the same width and same height
• Each chart has a title corresponding the concerned part of the SWOT matrix.
• The Legend is hidden
• Data values
  • Data type = Label
  • Data position = Inside
• Same font size for Data Values
• No border
• Category Axis:
  • Design is hidden
  • Title is hidden
• Value Axis:
  • Design is hidden
  • Title is hidden
• Set the same color:
  • Chart Title Background Color
  • Plot Area Background Color
  • Plot Area Category Grid Axis Color

You can tweak the layout depending on the maximum number of values for a given part of the SWO matrix: increase or decrease the font size, increase or decrease the width and height.

Voila, that’s all.

You can download the Web Intelligence report attached to that publication that details all the steps described in that document.

Didier MAZOUE