ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING

Environmental Scanning

Environmental Scanning

Introduction

This process has been identified by the Harvard Business School Professor, Francis Aguilar in the mid 1960s. He described the environmental scanning as the course of actions to watch and collect the information about the overall market.

Environmental scanning is basically a process of collecting, assessing, and dispensing the information for the strategic use and purpose. This process is helpful in obtaining the factual and the comprehensive information on the overall business environments of the company. It also helps in proving the information about the new environment in which the company is considering to enter. The environmental scanning has a great role in the organizations' success as it evaluates the complete industry which provides the in-depth knowledge to better approach the market needs.

Discussion

Environmental scanning starts with the monitoring, assessing and dispersing the information from the external as well as internal environment to the key people in the organization (Kazmi, 2008). The environmental scanning has great role in the company's success as it plays a guiding role and provides a road map to the company comprising of where to start, what resources should be exploited and when to get the desired position. It tells the company about the current trend and the current market position. According to Dess et al. (2005), the managers can exploit the information gathered through the environmental analysis in undertaking his operations and creating a sustainable competitive advantage.

Adebis explained that the environmental scanning as the key driver to take the organization on the smooth road of success. The environmental scanning has a great role in strategic management which assesses how an organization can do well and extra ordinary in the same environment with the opportunities and threats (2011).

The environmental scanning has the following process:

The environmental scanning has great importance in the strategic analysis as it provided complete information of the industry where the organization is operating. This information is used in the long term strategic planning of the organization where the company can develop its competitive advantage for steady and sustainable growth in the market for a long period. The environmental analysis helps in analyzing the internal elements of the organization and the external elements which can be employed together to make the efficient organizational operations. The internal and external elements of the organization which are as following:

The market scanning has three approaches that are as following:

Systematic: it includes the overall information about the markets, customers, regulations and legislation. All of the information that can have direct or indirect impact on the company and its activities are collected and this information is continuously monitored to keep a track about the changes. This is done on regular basis mostly once in a year in order to be up to dated with the industry information.

Ad-Hoc: under this approach, the special surveys are conducted in order to deal with specific environmental matters. This approach is usually conducted at the time of crisis as it assesses the organizational environment and analyzes the problem whether it is an external or ...