Conduct a SWOT Analysis to Gain Strategic Procurement Insights

Do you know the decision-makers and influencers who significantly influence your procurement processes and activities? Not knowing who your key players are can lead to poor decision-making, delays, and missed opportunities for collaboration.

Your procurement team can overcome this obstacle by conducting a thorough stakeholder assessment to ensure you engage with the right people from the start. 

Identify Your Most Critical Internal Stakeholders

By leveraging something called a SWOT assessment, you can better understand your strategic position while also spotlighting those key decision-makers and influencers who are pivotal to your procurement team’s operational efficiency and success.

A procurement SWOT is a tool that offers procurement organizations valuable insights into your most critical internal partners. By assessing internal stakeholders’ strengths, weaknesses, potential opportunities, and risks, you can develop more effective procurement strategies for planning and resource allocation throughout the lifecycle of your projects. 

Conduct a SWOT Analysis

Use these steps as a general guideline:

1. Create a SWOT Framework

Divide a document into four sections representing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Or use a SWOT analysis template like the one below:

• Strengths: Determine any unique strengths and capabilities that could contribute significantly to your procurement strategy. A stakeholder group may have specialized skills, influential positions, or extensive knowledge you can leverage for your procurement operations.
  
  
• Weaknesses: Evaluate any limitations impacting a stakeholder’s ability to contribute effectively to procurement activities. Understanding these limitations allows you to determine whether additional support, training, or resources are needed to address these weaknesses or mitigate potential risks.
  
  
• Opportunities: Identify potential partners who can leverage emerging opportunities or contribute to new initiatives within your procurement department. These key collaborators can adapt to changing circumstances, explore innovative approaches, or connect with external networks that bring additional opportunities.
  
  
• Threats: Assess potential threats or challenges that could hinder a stakeholder’s engagement or effectiveness in the project, such as competing priorities, resistance to change, or conflicting interests. By identifying these threats, you can create strategies to address them proactively.

2. Analyze and Prioritize

Next, review the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats you’ve identified. Analyze the relationships between them and prioritize based on their potential impact and importance to your organizational objectives and procurement functions.

3. Develop Strategies

Based on your findings, establish procurement strategies to capitalize on strengths, address weaknesses, seize opportunities, and mitigate threats. Make sure your approach aligns with both the procurement function and overall business goals.

4. Monitor and Review

Regularly revisit and update the SWOT analysis as your business landscape evolves. Monitor changes in market conditions and business performance. Adapt your strategies accordingly.

A SWOT analysis offers a comprehensive understanding of key internal partners so you can better prioritize them based on their strengths and ability to capitalize on opportunities and overcome threats. Use this in-depth assessment to allocate the right resources and build a powerful alliance of the internal partners and procurement professionals who are best positioned to add to the success of your strategic procurement goals, as well as those of your company.

Want to learn about additional real-world applications of SWOT in the procurement process? Read our e-book >> https://www.graphiteconnect.com/resource/swot-in-procurement/