TOWS Matrix Template

The TOWS Matrix template is a variation of the SWOT analysis that helps you analyze your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats so you can generate strategic options to move your business forward. The TOWS analysis is a powerful strategic tool to help you:

• Identify core values and opportunities that your organization excels at, and where you can improve.
• Define your whole organization’s strategic roadmap, or break it down to identify strategies for each department or team.
• Use it to analyze a process – marketing campaign. fundraising efforts, development workflow, etc.

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The TOWS Matrix template is a variation of the SWOT analysis that helps you analyze your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats so you can generate strategic options to move your business forward. The TOWS analysis is a powerful strategic tool to help you:

• Identify core values and opportunities that your organization excels at, and where you can improve.
• Define your whole organization’s strategic roadmap, or break it down to identify strategies for each department or team.
• Use it to analyze a process – marketing campaign. fundraising efforts, development workflow, etc.

The TOWS Matrix is a variation of the SWOT Analysis designed to uncover your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Taking the traditional SWOT Analysis a step further, the TOWS analysis specifically looks at the relationships between the different factors and categories to help you develop strategic solutions for your organization.

Both startups and large enterprises use the TOWS analysis approach as a primary strategic planning tool to match internal and external factors. This can help your organization understand how to take advantage of opportunities, reduce threats, overcome weaknesses and exploit your team’s strengths. You can use this tool for a variety of purposes: 

• Identify core values and opportunities that your organization excels at, and where you can improve.
• Define your whole organization’s strategic roadmap, or break it down to identify strategies for each department or team.
• Use it to analyze a process – marketing campaign. fundraising efforts, development workflow, etc.

With Xtensio, you can easily generate a TOWS analysis tailored to fit your specific requirements. You can work hand-in-hand with your team on a live doc, leave feedback, or share a link to maintain visibility across your organization.

While a SWOT analysis is an effective tool for uncovering your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, the TOWS analysis helps you create actionable strategies from those findings.

The TOWS analysis allows you to connect the relationships between each quadrant of the matrix:

• Strengths to Opportunities: Emphasize your internal strengths to create more opportunities.
• Strengths to Threats: Take advantage of your strengths to foresee and resolve possible threats.
• Weaknesses to Opportunities: Overcome weaknesses and turn them into opportunities.
• Weaknesses to Threats: Determine the areas you need to improve and eliminate threats.

By analyzing these relationships, you can create a list of solutions your team needs to implement. For long-term plans, break them into steps with a specific timeline or milestones so you can make better decisions as you move forward.

By turning SWOT to TOWS analysis, you can generate more comprehensive insights for your organization. Remember, you can also use this tool in more granular aspects of your business like analyzing a marketing campaign, improving customer service or streamlining production flows.

There are four strategic alternatives that can be developed from the TOWS analysis. Depending on your objectives and other environmental factors within the organization, use the strategies that best fit your situation. 

• SO Situation or Maxi-Maxi Strategy: This strategy has the greatest potential for success because it focuses on using your organization’s internal strengths to maximize external opportunities. For example, if you have a cost advantage over competitors you could combine that with an opportunity to expand into another market.
• WO Situation or Mini-Maxi Strategy: In this case, you can look at how the opportunities in the market can be leveraged to overcome your organization’s weaknesses. If you run a design agency specializing in branding but your team is lacking the development skills to make your work stand out, you may use that as an opportunity to outsource to a more specialized team.
• ST Situation or Maxi-Mini Strategy: Here, you’ll look at your company’s strengths to understand how you can avoid real and potential threats in the market. If you have a cost advantage but there’s a possible threat of lost profit margins due to external factors like seasonal trends or market fluctuations, you may want to develop strategies to leverage your product or service’s affordability to prevent slumps.
• WT Situation or Mini-Mini Strategy: In this defensive strategy, you’ll look at both your internal weaknesses and external threats to find ways to minimize both. This may mean you need to develop strategic partnerships or possibly rethink your business idea altogether.