[IU] Information Uncover™

  Strategic Management Consulting for the Weight Loss or Bariatric Industry
  We Strive to Uncover Early Signs of Future Opportunities and Threats


Environmental Scanning & Analysis


We use environmental scanning to monitor the external business environment, by continually reviewing industry related publications. We also talk with industry experts about issues and developments associated with the industry. We analyze the resulting information to uncover early signs of future opportunities and threats to help an organization better manage its business strategy. Francis Joseph Aguilar is probably the first author to gain broad recognition for his work on environmental scanning. His book, Scanning the Business Environment, published in 1967, is probably the best-known book on the subject.

Environmental scanning is useful in detecting environmental issues
, and environmental scanning results are essential in looking at an organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The combination of these activities is called SWOT analysis.

To do our environmental scanning and analysis, we break the environment up into categories we call forces. We analyze information associated with these forces and create environmental scenarios to arrive at strategic implications. Here is a brief outline of some of the key components of our environmental scanning and analysis process:
    • We use ten environmental force types.
    • We use our text mining methods to expedite the environmental scanning process.
    • We acquire environmental force results using our scanning process.
    • We use visualization techniques to aid in analyzing the force results.
    • We determine dominant forces and use them to build plausible environmental scenarios.
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    • We analyze the scenarios and scanning results.
          To get an idea of how an environmental scanning analysis is done, please see
          "A Hospital Scanning Study."