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Step 4 :: Environmental Scan

The next phase of strategic planning team is a qualitative examination directed to understanding of the context and environment in which strategic improvements will occur. The environmental scan is intended to analyze the current situation and circumstances to show how the region fits in the larger environment. A situation analysis is a review of internal capacity (competitive position) and external circumstances (driving forces) affecting the organization, its customers, its collaborators, and its stakeholders and the influence of those conditions on the organizations vision, mission and objectives.

Competitive Position. An examination of the organization’s position in its environment can come from:
1. Readiness Checklist – A community self-assessment checklist is a good way to gauge preparedness in relation to its environment. Questions in the checklist are designed to uncover gaps across its organizational capacity, information accessibility, and program and resource availability.
2. Market Segmentation (to be developed) – Market segmentation is the identification and analysis customers and potential customers of an organization’s programs. The customer segments should be arranged to show which features, attributes and benefits are required in a product and what public sector role there should be in the delivery of the good or service.
3. Portfolio Analysis (pdf 32KB)– Portfolio analysis analyzes the products and services currently being offered and the features, attributes, and benefits of the products or services from the customer’s perspective. Often surveys or focus groups are used to uncover gaps in terms of capacity, accessibility, or availability of programs or services.

Driving Force. Forces outside of the organization that effect its operations are important and include:
1. Trends Analysis (to be developed)– A trend analysis is any ‘systems’ oriented assessment that first identifies the important outside forces acting on the organization or its customers; defines the relationship of those forces to the organization; and foretells the expected influence of those forces on the responsiveness or accountability of a community’s development initiatives.
2. Sociological, Technical, Economic, and Political (STEP) Analysis (to be developed) – The STEP analysis spotlights the larger macro-environmental (political, economic, sociological, and technical) variables and trends that are typically beyond the organization’s control but non-the-less influences the organizations environment and therefore its behavior.
3. Needs and Assets – A needs and assets assessment questionnaire such as the community advantage and program profile survey seeks the opinions of area stakeholders. Questions concentrate on community advantages in terms of physical or social assets and community needs in terms of new programs or services.
4. Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats – * The SWOT analysis explores internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats to the organizations’ community development objectives. It seeks to explore opportunities based on strengths and to ameliorate weaknesses to expected threats.

Other ideas ??? send your comments, suggestions, and examples to lced@aces.uiuc.edu