Scanning the Environment - Boeing EFAS/IFAS

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About Boeing
Boeing is the world's leading aerospace company and the largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft combined, with capabilities in rotorcraft, electronic and defense systems, missiles, satellites, launch vehicles and advanced information and communication systems. It is supplying to customers in 145 countries around the world, and also are the number one U.S. exporter in terms of sales.
(www.boeing.com)

Its headquarters are located in Chicago, Boeing's stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The major divisions are Boeing Commercial Airplanes and the Integrated Defense System, Boeing Capital corporation, Phantom Works (advanced research and development unit.), Shared Services Group (provides infrastructure services)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing
http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/10/10221.html

Environmental analysis

Whole strategic planning process starts from extensive scanning of external and internal environment of an organization to understand the relative positioning of the firm in the business environment or industry it operates in and to identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the organization. Companies should constantly make changes in the way they manage their firm to keep up with the competition and to satisfy the consumers. For example, Ford, Chrysler and GM must always change their business tactics and strategies to lure customers and to stop the Japanese competition from taking away their customers. As experienced in the summer of 2005, the American competitors changed their strategy by offering employee discounts. Sales however, did increase but consumers were still lured to the Japanese imports. Thus, they needed to improve their strategy and adapt to the ever changing needs of the market.

There is no doubt that strategies evolve because of the unexpected responses such as customers' expectations, new technologies, popular commodities, the change in the environment and pop culture. Thus a company's strategy must be combined with a proactive strategy and reactive strategy

IF we closely analyze this statement, the patterns of an organization's actions will be clearly reflected not only in the financial performance of an organization over the years but in the relative strengths, weaknesses and strategic positioning of the firm in the business environment, industry or economy it operates in. The understanding of these elements is the prima facie requirement in the strategic planning and management process and is closely analyzed in the environmental scanning process of an organization. These factors are very important in establishing the corporate level strategies of an organization. But one has to remember that there are numerous other factors also such as general state of economy, industry growth rates, etc. which influence the formulation of strategy. Thus let us discuss the environmental analysis of Boeing in Detail.

SWOT analysis

SWOT Analysis is a powerful technique for understanding your Strengths and weaknesses, and for looking at the Opportunities and Threats you face. Specifically, SWOT Analysis is a simple but powerful framework for analyzing your company's Strengths and Weakness, and the Opportunities and Threats you face. This helps you to focus on your strengths, minimize threats, and take the greatest possible advantage of opportunities available to you.
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_05.htm

External Factor Analysis Summary:
"The remote environment comprises factors that originate beyond, and usually irrespective of, any single firm's operating situation: (1) economic, (2) social, (3) political, (4) technological, and (5) ecological factors." (Pearce, 2004, p.79) Globalization presents a new series of challenges for organizations in that not only does the execution of core competencies become more challenging as well as amplified in importance, but also in that cross-cultural communication and the interaction of disparate values and beliefs further complicate organizational operations. Here we will analyze the affect of societal forces and to see what trends are like to affect the Boeing in a brief manner:

Opportunities

Globalization
Globalization means operating in the world economy as a single economy. Globalization is a ...