Environmental Scanning for Women's Clothing Industry

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Environmental Scanning
Forecasts of the performance of the construction industry based on changes in the variables analyzed in the first phase of this study will be generated. The objective in this phase is to show to what degree different economic conditions in Mexico could affect the construction equipment industry under a variety of scenarios. Steps to be followed in this phase are as follows:
• Examine possible economic changes in the Mexican economy in the next 5 years.
• Construct different economic scenarios.
• Evaluate the performance of the construction equipment industry under those scenarios. Once these two phases are completed, results of the research will be summarized and recommendations will be made that can be used as the basis for possible expansion into the Mexican Construction Industry marketplace. Makridakis also explains that long-term forecasting is necessary to develop foresight about the future and to evaluate the direction and extent of forthcoming changes. They are also important in identifying potential opportunities and threats. Hence, forecasting provides real strategic benefits and much can be done to improve its usefulness and relevance to executives.

It is important to notice that when a company bases its strategies on extrapolative trends it is
Assuming that the environment will remain the same and that the company itself as well as the
Competition will not change. This may be an important source of error mainly because, as
Makridakis explains, this implies that the future is deterministic and anyone could plan accurately for that; but doing so would create more aggressive competition, altering the actual pattern. It is also an error because historically it has been shown that no large, bureaucratic firm has managed to maintain the growth in its profits at the rate it established when it was smaller, more flexible and more entrepreneurial. There is a final warning about long term forecasting related to the historical dataset selected for the problem being analyzed. The confidence in the extrapolations and its implications depends on the ability of the forecaster to determine the starting period for the dataset and his ability to distinguish long-wave cycles from long-term trends. "Scientific forecasting can accurately predict (and estimate) uncertainty when established patterns and relationships do not change. No other forecasts are possible to make except by using analogies in which case the analogy must be made clear, or by making subjective inferences as to how patterns and relationships might change. Making analogies or subjective inferences, however, requires several assumptions which must be made explicit, as the accuracy of forecasts relates directly on the validity of those assumptions." It can be said that the objectives when using forecasting models should be to understand the Mechanisms that drive the system, to determine what is likely to happen to the outputs in the system if present conditions are maintained and finally get an understanding of the ways those mechanisms could be modified in the future.

A business plan is a comprehensive, written description of the business of an enterprise. It is a detailed report on a company's products or services, production techniques, markets and clients, marketing strategy, human resources, organization, requirements in respect of infrastructure and supplies, financing requirements, and sources and uses of funds.

The business plan describes the past and present status of a business, but its main purpose is to present the future of an enterprise. It is normally updated annually and looks ahead for a period ...