Assignment

Directions

Explain the functional areas that were focused on within these studies, such as marketing, human resources, social media, and web analytics.

Explain how these methods and visualization techniques were used and recommendations for future usage of these methods to assist with environmental scans that may lead to enhancements within the organizational strategic plans.

According to Ventana Research analysts (2012), "The top five sources of data tapped for predictive analytics also relate directly to revenue: customer (69%), marketing (67%), product (55%), sales (54%), and financial (51%)." They showed that the largest source of these data came from social media.

While this might be helpful, I would definitely recommend validating what you find with other types of external environmental scanning techniques as well. Other techniques I have found include PEST, SWOT, QUEST, Industry Analysis, and Competitor Analysis. Babatunde and Adebisi (2012) conducted a study using a few of these techniques and found that 29% of the variation in the market share was due to a variation in environmental scanning.

Babatunde, B. O., & Adebisi, A. O. Strategic Environmental Scanning and Organization Performance in a Competitive Business Environment.

Overview/Background.

Ventana Research, 2012. Predictive Analytics: Improving Performance by Making the Future More Visible [White paper].

One of the methods often being used for environmental scanning is through the use of Google Analytics. Use the library to research at least two case studies and/or articles in which Google Analytics, PEST, SWOT, or QUEST methods were used to perform an environmental scan and create a competitive advantage.