6 Steps to a Successful SWOT Analysis

Posted by Kelley LearcloseAuthor: Kelley Lear Name: Kelley Lear
Email: kelley.lear@redmoonsolutions.com
Site: http://blog.redmoonsolutions.com
About: Kelley is a member of the executive leadership team and leads our sales and marketing efforts at Red Moon Solutions. Kelley’s extensive experience in project management, product management, and consulting with Fortune 500 and Global 1000 clients is extremely important in this role.See Authors Posts (127) on Dec 21, 2010 | 0 comments

To conduct a SWOT analysis, here are six simple steps you will want to go through with your tax department and/or with Finance and IT as needed (and depending upon the process or issue you are tackling):

1. Explain the process – Time is of the essence in tax, so make sure participants know why they are there and what the expected outcomes are.

2. Get a flip chart, white board or projected electronic note board so that everyone can see, as you brainstorm through a list of STRENGTHS, as a team. These will be internal strengths, or things that you can control, such as parts of the process or things that you think are things you do very well as it relates to the topic you are analyzing. Examples might be: your communication with Finance; a tax sensitized data mart you are able to pull data from easily, best practices steps defined and documented for a particular process, etc.

3. Next, cover your WEAKNESSES. These will be internal as well, and are things that impact your work negatively. Examples might be: communication with Finance, lack of tax accounting expertise, manual data manipulation, high turnover, etc.

4. List OPPORTUNITIES. These are usually external factors as opposed to internal strengths and weaknesses. Examples could be IFRS or Uncertain Tax Positions – Schedule UTP which may provide you the opportunity to get budget with solid ROI backing, to further automate your tax department.

5. Identify THREATS. These are also external factors such as higher cross boarder audit activity in which foreign entities are sharing your data in order to up tax revenues.

6. Lastly, ESTABLISH PRIORITIES. You will have four lists of brainstormed data points. You will need to work through a prioritization process to reduce those lists to five top priorities. A good way to do this in a workshop is to use sticky notes or dots and allow folks to rank their top picks on a scale from 1-5.

After all this good work, it is time to discuss next steps. You will want to encourage discussion around:

• How can we maximize and expand our strengths?
• How can we overcome the threats identified?
• What do we need to overcome weaknesses?
• How can we take advantage of our opportunities?

Then, put an action plan together. Click here for “SWOT for Tax: 6 Steps to Plan Your Attack! a FREE eBook explaining SWOT in further detail! Happy SWOT!