Steve Pachorek
MGT/498
October 8th, 2012
George Staight
Environmental Scan Paper
A business environment is made up of both internal and external factors. The environment of a business must be scanned to be able to determine what factors the company can use to determine the development and forecasts that will help in the success of the business. The definition of Environmental Scanning, as per managementstudyguide.com, is the “possession and utilization of information about occasions, patterns, trends, and relationships within an organization’s internal and external environment”.
Scanning is used to identify the threats and opportunities that exist in the business environment. Some of the internal environment factors that a company must observe include; employee interaction with each other, with management, manager interaction with other managers, and manager interaction with shareholders, brand awareness, organizational structure and the main staff (managementstudyguide.com, 2012). The company may use other resources to gain this information as in group discussions, surveys and interviews. This information than may be used to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the company.
External environment plays an important role as a company starts to become more competitive and changes start to occur. As these changes start to occur, it becomes essential for the company to identify what their competitors are doing. These changes may also affect the internal environment, so it is important that the company update its core competencies as per the external environment. Because external environments are always changing, the company should be ready at all times to be able to accept and adjust to the environmental changes. External monitoring could include the original forecasts of raw materials, which may affect the credibility of the original source. This will force the company to be more focused on scanning, forecasting and
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