Test your understanding of SWOTs

By Edouard Demeire, expert-trainer of The Pharma Brand Planning Course.

The Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities – Threats analysis or simply SWOT analysis is a tool that is used across functions within pharma companies. The SWOT is the most basic, but also the most crucial part of a Pharma Brand Plan because it helps to identify a brand’s Critical Success Factors (CSFs) , which in turn need to be addressed in commercial, access & medical tactical plans.

However, a SWOT analysis is often a source of confusion and miscommunication and it becomes a weak part of a Pharma Brand Plan which can benefit from improvement! That is because criteria for developing a ‘Good’ SWOT are often not fully understood.

Here is a question to test yourself:

Which item in the SWOT below should be improved?

The item in Opportunities is wrong because obtaining an indication is a strength, not an opportunity. If this sentence were phrased “The first line indication has a large patient pool with high unmet need”, then it would have been an opportunity. However, the item states that WE have obtained an indication for OUR Brand, so it is a strength.

Often, people think the item in the Weaknesses section is wrong because a mis-perception does not read as a ‘real’ weakness of the brand. However, it is correct because Brand Plans should indeed reflect the beliefs of stakeholders (as they drive prescriptions), not the ‘reality’, which stakeholders do not perceive.

TIP: If you don’t know for sure if an item in the SWOT is either a strength/weakness or opportunity/threat, then ask yourself the following question: is it about our company or our brand ? If the answer is yes, it must be a Strength or Weakness, if no, it is an Opportunity or Threat.

The next difficulty is to create a short and clear SWOT. At that point it is very important to prioritise the SWOTs because otherwise your plan will include far too many Critical Success Factors for the limited resources your organisation can provide you for implementation. There are handy analytical tools (i.e. Impact & Probability Analysis, Differential Analysis) to help you prioritise and select which items should be in your Brand’s SWOT.