SWOT Vs. TOWS, Which one is better?

For the first time learners of Strategy the aforementioned terms would feel quite obnoxious as they won’t be able to comprehend the meaning of one of the most widely used tools employed by business experts for strategic analysis and decision making.


So, what does this SWOT and TOWS stand for? And as prospective managers why is it important to understand.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis is an analysis tool which is most widely known and used by managerial experts across the globe and helps to understand at a time point what led from the past undertaking i.e. Strengths & Weaknesses and what lies in future i.e. Opportunities and Threats of the business entity/ company


It is an analysis to understand the current. It is not meant for creation of strategic choices but it contributes immensely in the process.

Strengths	Opportunities
Weaknesses	Threats

Strengths

Strengths are the inherent favourable conditions/ abilities of the company which might be a differentiating factor in the market in comparison to its competitors.

Weaknesses

Weaknesses are the inherent limitations/ limiting factors which might be potentially effecting the productivity and even the profitability of the company.

Opportunities

Opportunities are future/ existing probable favourable factors either in the Internal or External business environment. Company’s ability to leverage such opportunity (ies) might result in multifold development of the company.

Threats

Threats are future/ existing probable non-favourable/ unpleasant factors which can potentially disrupt the operations of the company.

From the above examination we can understand that SWOT is a mapping tool of business managers and experts. However, for keen readers, it can also be inferred upon that there prevails a small yet significant limitation, over and above other major issues, that is SWOT is not action-oriented. To simply put forward, SWOT identifies areas for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats but it doesn’t provide its user with road-map for future course of action. To overcome, this subtle limitation TOWS was introduced.

TOWS Analysis

To simply put forward TOWS is the inverse of SWOT but it has far more reaching applications than SWOT. TOWS similar to its predecessor considers 4 main aspects for strategic analysis of the entity-Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

However, it adopts a slightly different approach by mapping the Strengths with Weaknesses, Strengths with Threats, so on and so forth.

^{Pic. Source: (Chaffey, 2019)}

SO (Maxi-Maxi Strategy)

Matching of Strengths with Opportunities guides in leveraging the inherent competencies to maximize the profitability from favourable conditions.

WO (Mini-Maxi Strategy)

Matching of Weaknesses with Opportunities is a way forward of avoiding the impact of inherent limitations with favourable opportunities.

ST (Maxi-Mini Strategy)

Matching Strengths with Threats helps to understand and devise a road-map for curtailing probable impact or for being proactively prepared for future uncertainties.

WT (Mini-Mini Strategy)

Likewise, matching Weaknesses with Threats provides ground for understanding and identifying the death-traps laid by the environment and Company’s inabilities.

Conclusion

It should be pretty much evident now, that TOWS is much more beneficial in decision-making in comparison to SWOT. It can hence be concluded that which one amongst SWOT and TOWS is better is matter of opinion largely based on the purpose. If the user merely intends to identify the Strengths, Opportunities, etc. than SWOT is sufficient; but in cases, the user want to go a further notch into the domains of analysis and decision-making than TOWS is essential. However, on the end note it should also be kept in mind that TOWS is predominantly not possible at all without SWOT and so the SWOT Analysis edges over TOWS which is also observable from the wide-spread acknowledgement SWOT Analysis has achieved across all business verticals, which TOWS has failed to achieve.