SWOT Analysis — A Single-Company SWOT Competitive Analysis Skill Based on Public Evidence

Skill Overview

swot-analysis is a market intelligence workflow skill that builds an evidence-based SWOT analysis of your own company or a competitor based on public records. Strengths and weaknesses are drawn from verified capabilities and customer feedback, while opportunities and threats come from market and macro signals. Every item includes a source link and a Fact/Inference label. The analysis concludes with the S-O offensive and W-T exposure cross-analysis that most SWOTs lack.

Use Cases

1. Strategic Reviews and Board Preparation: Before a strategy workshop or board meeting, prepare a defensible SWOT of a major competitor—every conclusion can be traced to public evidence rather than meeting-room impressions.
2. In-Depth Competitive Research: After a competitive snapshot identifies “who matters,” conduct a deep analysis of one or two key competitors to understand their genuine strengths and exploitable weaknesses.
3. Partner or Acquisition Evaluation: When assessing whether to partner with or acquire a company, use public records to evaluate its market position rather than relying solely on its self-description.

Core Features

1. Evidence-Cited Four-Quadrant Analysis: Strengths (S) and weaknesses (W) come from verified internal capabilities and customer feedback, while opportunities (O) and threats (T) come from external market, competitor, and macro signals. Each item includes a source URL and a Fact/Inference label. Each quadrant contains no more than five prioritized items, enforcing a focus on “just enough” evidence.
2. Claim vs. Evidence Validation: A company’s claim of “enterprise-grade reliability” on its website is merely a claim; a status page showing more than 99.95% uptime over 26 months, together with consistently positive reviews on independent review sites, constitutes evidence. A strength is not counted until it is supported by customer reviews, financial reports, or independent coverage. Customer feedback receives the greatest weight in the weaknesses quadrant—buyers will document shortcomings vendors refuse to acknowledge.
3. S-O/W-T Cross-Analysis: S-O answers, “Which verified strength can be used to capitalize on which external opportunity?” and provides one or two offensive actions. W-T answers, “Which threat will hit which weakness first?” and identifies the risk exposure. The analysis concludes with a two-sentence decision recommendation and a list of hypotheses to validate, turning SWOT into an input for action rather than a four-box poster.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is it different from a standard SWOT template?

A standard SWOT is often an unsourced four-box brainstorming exercise, with items that are essentially personal opinions arranged into quadrants. This skill requires every item to have a public source (link and date) and labels it as either a fact or an inference. It also separates “marketing claims” from “verified strengths” and always includes an S-O offensive analysis and W-T exposure analysis. A SWOT without a “so what” will not be trusted.

Where does the evidence come from? Will it fabricate data?

Everything comes from public records: financial reports and other public filings, review sites, press releases, pricing pages, hiring signals, and more. If the conversation already contains a competitive snapshot, Voice of the Customer (VoC) themes, or company intelligence, the skill synthesizes those materials directly and only searches for gaps or outdated information. Financial data, customer wins, market share, and product roadmaps are on the “do not fabricate” list—if there is no evidence, they will not appear in the results.

How long does one analysis take? Can it focus on just one product line?

Each run takes approximately 20–35 minutes. The analysis can cover an entire company or focus on a single product line or market. At the start, it asks no more than three questions (who to analyze, what decision the analysis should support, and whose perspective to take). If those questions are not answered, it proceeds based on clearly labeled assumptions rather than blocking the workflow.