Value chain analysis, first developed by Michael Porter in 1985, breaks every business activity into value-adding and wasteful parts. Nestle used it to cut sugar costs by 34 percent while Starbucks eliminated intermediaries to control quality.
SWOT analysis, created by Albert Humphrey at Stanford Research Institute, maps strengths and weaknesses against external opportunities and threats. A nine-step process with the TOWS matrix turns findings into real strategy.
Business process analysis examines how work flows through your organization, pinpoints bottlenecks, and reveals where to improve before automating anything. Michael Hammer showed that analysis must precede any process reengineering.