PEST analysis

Through our day to day operations of business we tend to view factors about which affect our business as internal and controllable. However, some larger factors are at play here and in the following pages we will explore the following areas: Political, Economic, Social and Technological; all together these stand for PEST, a similar analysis to SWOT analysis but, does not view the factors of external or internal but, views it from a holistic effect on the company.

I believe the most interesting aspect of the PEST analysis for our company would be the Technology side of the house. With the advancement of Electronic logging, the advancement in the technology on the tractors in regards to their ability to avoid rear-end collisions and the advancement in the GPS tracking of the loads.

Electronic logging is going to be a mandatory requirement in December 2017 and for good reason; if you are not familiar with paper logging for our truck drivers it can be a daily pain in the back side. Logs are setup in 15 min increments. The drivers are required to log it as they do it, meaning if they were to be bulled over the driver needs to have his/her log to the point they left their last delivery or most recent stop or change of duty. Electronic logging allows the drivers to be virtually hands off because even if the driver fails to change their duty statues they will be able to continue working on because the system will change the statues for them.

As mention above another major advancement in tech which alerts the driver when he may be too close the forward vehicle and if it drops below 1 sec the system will retard the engine immediately to help avoid an accident.

Some other not as often used tech is the monitoring of the tire pressure; the movement of trailers and RFID on freight to track when it leaves and enters the trailer.

Tech will continue to make things better and better as computers advance.