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     The Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) team is a specialized force that the police use when an operation is considered high risk or outside the responsibilities of regular officers. These people are trained civilian warriors that may use military-like maneuvers and weaponry to combat situations like hostage rescue, riot control, or counter-terrorism. The SWAT is called to deal with out of the ordinary or extreme measures in policing.
  
      In business, when a situation needs consideration or review, or a major move is made a SWOT analysis is performed. The SWOT is a strategic planning maneuver that takes a look at a company's internal and external environment and identifies the helpful or harmful influences that affect performance.

     SWOT stands for Strengths, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threats. This analysis will begin the process of identifying key components of a business that will allow the most efficient and productive moves to be made while eliminating the most unproductive, or protect and safeguard from potential future challenges.
Strengths- A company should have several factors that will set it apart from its competitors. Brand recognition, marketing expertise, quality process or procedures, CRM, or unique innovative products will add value to the business and these strengths should be identified and magnified.
Weakness- These need to be identified in order to be converted to strengths, or eliminated completely. Too many will severely damage a company. Weaknesses include: damaged reputation, lack of experience, undifferentiated products from competitors, poor customer service/ quality control, limitation of service or product line.
Opportunities-These are external factors that once identified will help a business increase its value. The ability to match an opportunity to a strength will give a company a competitive advantage in the market. Opportunities may include mergers, joint ventures, or strategic alliances with complementary businesses. International expansion, or newly developed markets such as the internet presence may also increase value. Sometimes, opportunities occur when a competitor closes and a market void is able to be filled.
Threats- Any outside influence that may cause harm or damage to a business must be noted and either avoided, or carefully acknowledged in order to protect an even larger potential threat.  Most threats are completely out of the sphere of influence from business, but if identified early a threat can become an opportunity. Threats are caused by government regulation or deregulation of an industry, taxation, international law, price wars, or new emerging competition.

     A SWOT should be performed at the very least once a year, a good business will address some of the components every six months in order to impact its profitability. A business can function without this procedure the same as the police could handle a potential criminal threat, but the SWAT is certainly the better team to handle a high risk situation. The success in using either is the ability to leverage resources and control the internal and external environment surrounding the situation.