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The SWOT Analysis of the fictional company offers a focused, neutral insight into our example portal business and its positioning within the greater digital media landscape.
Please note: It goes without saying that each and every portal, or SaaS platform business will have different Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, as per the marketplace, landscape and product detail.
The examples below are vanilla and based off an emerging technology portal business model.
STRENGTHS
The key strengths for the business are as follows:
MANAGEMENT – The business is led by an elite team with great R&A and digital media experience.
NEW TECHNOLOGY – The business will have developed new platform technology that will enable the business to rapidly replicate its properties into new verticals.
GROWTH INDUSTRIES – The business is concentrated on high growth industry verticals, both in terms of employees and revenue potential.
SUBSCRIPTIONS – The business will lock many of its customers into 1 or 2 year subscriptions.
GLOBAL IN REACH – The business is global in emphasis and reach and therefore not bound by local economies.
WEAKNESSES
The key weaknesses for the business are as follows:
RESOURCES – The business is capital and resource constrained.
LOCATION – The business needs to establish a physical presence and sales office in other key territories to maximise future growth.
CONTENT CREATION – Content creation and editorial is a large cost for the business.
CLIENT INTERACTION – Growth at the business requires regular client interaction with advertisers, subscribers and facilitators.
OPPORTUNITIES
The main opportunities for the business are as follows:
TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT – Recent and ongoing developments in the field of machine learning has enabling the core product to be produced.
INDUSTRY GROWTH – To use the technology infrastructure, methodologies and capabilities to enter attractive new industry sectors.
CONTENT – To reduce the cost of content production, whilst maintaining the quality and uniqueness of the content offering.
SCALABILITY – To improve the scale and gain efficiencies in IT development and utilisation.
BUILD RELATIONSHIPS – To use established key business relationships in new markets.
THREATS
Finally, the key strengths for the business are as follows:
NEW COMPETITOR – To not access as many new verticals as possible, thus allowing a competitor to emerge and compete for market share (lose market dominance).
TECHNOLOGY FAILURE – For the products or brand to be compromised either accidentally or overtly.
CAPITAL – To lack the capital to convert current opportunities into revenue.
EXPANSION RISKS – New vertical and regional expansion adds to risk and costs.
If you have more than 4-5 in each category, it is wise to order the list by importance, so that the reader knows and understands the importance of each factor.
If you are performing a more detailed SWOT exercise, then you might want to include a Competitive Profile Matrix (CPM). These offer a more logical view of the business and benchmarks it to notable competitors. A valuable exercise.
