DefinePK

Abstract

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play important role in the growth and stabilization of Indonesian economy. SMEs face many challenges that affect their growth and existence. However, they rarely adopt strategic management planning such as SWOT analysis that considers the external environment for opportunities and threats and internal conditions for strengths and weaknesses. SME operators are somewhat aware of the factors but many have limited understanding of how to employ the analysis. In this work, we develop “Sparta”, a SWOT analysis tool that is easy to operate by novice users. The tool has many features. A user needs only to input profile data and answer a set of questionnaire. From the answers, Sparta calculates strength and competitive posture, maps many aspects of SMEs condition into S, W, O and T categories and provides general strategies. Sparta helps doing the 8 steps of a normal SWOT analysis session so that they can be executed in approximately 15 minutes, compared to hours when doing them manually.