Understand your business, assess the wider market and make more informed strategic decisions with our free SWOT and PESTLE analysis templates.
The workbook helps you identify internal strengths and weaknesses, recognise external opportunities and threats, and explore the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors affecting your business.
Submit your details to access both editable business analysis templates.
Your details will be handled in accordance with our privacy policy.Use the SWOT and PESTLE frameworks together to understand what is happening inside your business and the external forces that could affect its future.
Assess the strengths and weaknesses inside your business alongside the external opportunities and threats that could influence your success.
Explore the wider political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental forces shaping your market.
Each section contains focused prompts to help you move beyond surface-level lists and identify the issues that could genuinely influence your business decisions.
Identify the capabilities, assets, expertise and advantages your business can build upon.
Recognise internal limitations, capability gaps and areas requiring improvement.
Explore market changes, customer needs and emerging possibilities your business could pursue.
Identify competitors, market risks and external changes that could negatively affect performance.
Consider government policy, public funding, taxation, trade and political priorities.
Examine inflation, interest rates, customer spending, employment and wider economic confidence.
Explore demographic, cultural, behavioural and lifestyle changes affecting customer demand.
Assess innovations, automation, AI and digital developments that could create opportunities or risks.
Review legislation, contracts, employment rules, data protection and industry regulations.
Consider sustainability, climate, supply chains and environmental expectations.
Turn your findings into a shortlist of the issues requiring the greatest attention.
Translate analysis into clear actions, owners, milestones and review dates.
The templates are suitable for people developing an initial business strategy and established organisations reviewing their position, market or growth plans.
Strong strategy requires an honest understanding of your current position and the wider forces that could affect what happens next.
Recognise the capabilities, knowledge and assets that make your business more valuable or difficult to replace.
Identify internal vulnerabilities and external threats before they become more serious business problems.
Recognise changes in customer behaviour, technology and the wider market that could create potential for growth.
Use evidence and structured analysis to test beliefs about your customers, competitors and commercial environment.
Focus your limited time, budget and resources on the issues most likely to affect your future performance.
Use this structured process to research your environment, evaluate your position and turn your findings into practical action.
Decide whether you are analysing your whole business, a new product, a market opportunity or a particular strategic challenge.
Collect customer feedback, sales data, competitor information, market research and insight from your team or advisers.
Identify the internal strengths and weaknesses of the business alongside external opportunities and threats.
Examine the wider political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental issues influencing your market.
Consider how your internal capabilities could help you respond to opportunities, threats and external market changes.
Prioritise the issues that matter most and decide what should be monitored, improved, protected or acted upon.
Download both templates and turn your findings into focused strategic priorities.
Common questions about completing SWOT and PESTLE analysis for a small business.
A SWOT analysis is a strategic framework used to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats affecting a business, product or project.
A PESTLE analysis examines the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors that could affect a business or market.
SWOT considers internal strengths and weaknesses alongside external opportunities and threats. PESTLE provides a more detailed examination of the wider external environment.
Yes. PESTLE analysis can help identify the external opportunities and threats that should be included in your SWOT analysis, creating a stronger evidence base for strategic decisions.
Review your analysis whenever you make an important strategic decision and at least annually. Businesses operating in fast-changing markets may need to review it more frequently.
Yes. They can help startups test an idea, understand their position, recognise risks and identify market factors that may influence the viability of the business.
Launchpad helps founders create detailed SWOT and PESTLE analyses using information about their business alongside relevant market insight.
See Launchpad in actionLaunchpad combines structured business information, live market data and AI-enabled guidance to help founders identify relevant strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and wider market factors.
SWOT analysis provides a balanced view of your current strategic position.
PESTLE analysis helps identify wider changes that may affect your market.
Evidence-led analysis helps challenge assumptions and reduce avoidable risks.
Connecting the two frameworks creates stronger strategic priorities.
Regular reviews help your strategy remain relevant as conditions change.
Understand your position, explore the wider market and turn strategic insight into focused action.