5.1. What Are the Benefits of Strategic Analysis?

The most difficult aspect of creating a strategy is deciding how exactly the strategy will be formulated. It is first necessary to be able to identify existing opportunities or create new opportunities on which the strategy will be based, and also to develop opportunities so that the resulting strategies are of a viable and competitive nature and are within the company’s means. Equally difficult and complicated is deciding on which opportunities should be realized and which should not. A useful tool which may help when creating a strategy is a strategic analysis.

Strategic analysis is a set of analyses which can provide support when deciding on a strategy. In small and medium-sized businesses which rely primarily on intuitive decision-making, a systematically implemented (and relatively simple) strategic analysis can offer the following benefits:

• Certain types of analysis are aimed at observing the company’s objectives from different and new perspectives – they can be especially helpful in terms of identifying and treating certain risks – something which would be neglected with a less systematic approach.

• The fact that a strategic analysis leads to a more systematic method of searching and working with “hard” data, allows for the revision of current data in that it can be updated with new data, modified, or changed entirely. It also increases strategy acceptance during the implementation processes and also has a higher chance of success.  

• Due to a more systematic approach to processing new data, it also aids in the identification or creation of new development opportunities for future growth.

• A more reliable foundation will help with internal and external justification of changes and necessary measures.

In this lesson, you will find suggestions on how to implement strategic analysis. In order to provide a comprehensive overview as well as potential inspiration for your company, we will explain all of the main types of analysis. At the same time, we must emphasize that in reality, it is best to select only the types of analysis that will benefit your company and that your company has the capacity to realistically implement.

In the following lessons, we will gradually explain the potential benefits of these analyses and how they can be implemented (see Figure below):

• Analysis of Trends in the Environment in Which the Company Operates, i.e. SLEPT analysis

• Analysis of the Level of Competition within an Industry and its Impact on the Strategy i.e. Porter Five Forces Analysis

• Analysis of the Needs and Demands of Key Stakeholders

• Competitive Analysis

• Supplier Analysis

• Customer Analysis

• Analysis of the Company – i.e. Internal Analysis

• Other Selected Analyses

Strategic Analysis (Hanzelková, 2015)