Scanning the environment

In a competitive environment, management is required to monitor & respond to three areas:

• Internal environment, over which they have a lot of influence, such as internal processes;
• Transactional environment, over which they have less influence, such as relationships with vendors; and
•  Contextual environment, over which they have little influence. Examples would be the political environment.

Management can increase its ability to respond to the transactional & contextual environment by being aware of events taking place it these areas. One tool is performing a regular scan of the environment. Such a scan is based on reading a wide number of journals, newspapers, websites etc with a view of noting "faint" messages that pertain to the company. By increasing its awareness an organisation can hopefully respond quicker and with more insight than its competitors.

Included is a scan that was performed of the South African mining industry. The key is to scan wide and deep, as indicated in the document. It is suggested that such a scan be performed every quarter.

Included is a link to the scan performed in pdf format. (https://www.box.net/shared/r2vl3bhodj)

Regards

Pieter