BIT wants to growth in the public sector.
In this post, I describe how the SWOT analysis can be a valid tool to build the relative strategy.

The Top management (the two owners) decided to form a dedicated team to develop the business case.
The team is composed by the quality coordinator, by the director of the Infrastructure B.U, by the director of Professional Services, by the director of Operations, by the director of sales and by the financial director.

The team decided to use the SWOT analysis to build the business case as this tool is well known and accepted inside the organization.
The two directors of the B.U. have already experience in using this technique; the Top Management use it regularly to evaluate new strategies. Also for these reasons, the quality coordinator suggested to use this technique to answer the requirement of the clause 5.6.2 (Review input) of the ISO 9001 version 2008.

A full day workshop is planned for Monday 5 January 2009 outside the BIT premises.
In the morning the team identifies the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (Fig 1) related to the strategic choice to expand in the Belux and EUI Public Tender Sectors. They agreed on a vision of 4 years.

Fig 1. SWOT analysis

In the afternoon, the team matched the Strengths and Opportunities with Weakness and Threats. When they think necessary, they identified further recommendations.  In case a recommendation is suggested, it is reported the eventual related risks and costs.
Based on this analysis,  the Business Case  for the next 4 years is established.
Fig 2. shows the milestones and the go no go decisions points of the plan.

Fig 2 – milestones and go no go decision points