What is the analysis of the environment?

Carrying out strategic planning for business decisions requires the execution of a surrounding analysis in order to understand the possible complications of the scenarios that surround him and thus achieve detect opportunities and threats before the competition, especially when carrying out strategies for marketing.

What is the analysis of the environment of a company?

The surrounding analysis consists of a procedure, where the company can identify the different strategic factors found in the environment capable of classify the factors that can influence positively and negatively, since together with the internal analysis they are part of the diagnosis of the business.

This type of business analysis basically revolves around the SWOT analysis of companies in order to have an exact knowledge of what are the opportunities and threats that may arise and in turn take advantage of the development of the company.

This means that carrying out a analysis of the environment of a company, consists directly with the in-depth evaluation of the regulatory, technological, financial environment, cultural and social that in some way could directly or indirectly influence the company.

Key factors to carry out the analysis of the environment

To facilitate this type of analysis, there are four key factors with indicators such as the following:

• Political factors: The applied labor legislation and political decisions can interfere in the activities and development of the company.
• Economic factors: There are many financial factors that can influence the environment and affect the activities of the company. In this sense, companies must try to identify and analyze the factors that may affect them.
• Statistical and social factors: These are the easiest factors to understand, these consist of observing the changes that arise in society such as social ethnic composition and economic status.
• Technological factors: These factors are fundamental for the development of the company, since they are tools that help to promote innovation.

Environmental analysis techniques

To perform this type of analysis, various techniques can be used that differ depending on whether the environment is general or specific. Similarly, there are other techniques that are common to both environments, capable of considering the analysis together in order to identify opportunities and threats. These are:

• General environment techniques: Can be executed through the use of PEST analysis.
• Competitive environment techniques: This technique is performed directly through the use of competition forces analysis.
• Environmental techniques together: It uses two types of techniques to carry out an analysis together with the environment, which is based on the scenario method, when the company creates different future scenarios and strategic profile, when the company is able to identify the value of its opportunities and threats.

Steps to perform an analysis of the environment of a company

To perform the analysis of the environment of a company, steps related to the results of the PERT analysis that is used, for this, the most appropriate ones for the company must be selected, some of these steps are:

Implement critical surveillance factors for each sub-environment

During the development of this step, it is necessary to choose the indicators that the company wants to measure, which is a difficult task due to the quality of information available and the frequency updated for the creation of each indicator.

Indicate and choose the appropriate sources

To get started, you need to review the most frequently consulted sources. They are generally adequate to account for and to strengthen critical surveillance factors.

Automate the acquisition and selection of information

This is the most difficult step when it comes to do the environment analysis, since many companies are not able to automate the development of the process that is required, which indicates that the efforts invested will not compensate the costs.

When the company is able to automate the development of the process, it saves time and money. This is due to the fact that it can be constantly updated in the face of any change and be alert to the threats and opportunities that arise in the environment.

Content distribution to internal and external clients

When the process has been authorized and begins to develop, it is essential that the collected factors are properly distributed to the company's internal and external customers. Similarly, it is important to meet this goal and keep customers satisfied.

For this, an advance analysis of the environment and the market to which the company wants to join must be carried out. You can also use different strategic analysis tools and create an action plan that help identify the distinction with other companies.

Benefits of environmental analysis

The business environment analysis It is essential to face the competition and thanks to this process, companies can obtain numerous benefits such as the following:

• It allows you to know everything you need about the company's environment.
• The information collected can be used in favor of the organization through different strategies that help the company to develop in its sector.
• It helps to make the right decisions that relate to any type of threat that may arise in the future.
• It induces an increase in commitment in the work team, since in order to carry out this study it is important that the entire team work together to investigate and acquire the appropriate information.
• A good work team in the different areas allows the increase of new ideas, the application of adequate strategies and solutions that favor the company in the event of any difficulty.

Do an environmental analysis It is essential for the initial situation of any company and thus to be able to subsequently define the strategies that are necessary according to its development. In general, this type of analysis manages to identify past, present and future situations and also to identify the difficulties to find a way to solve them.