4 assignments

You need to reference each company and each website.

Objectives

The aim of this assignment is make use of online information to help predict future issues facing a company.

Instructor Comments

No corporation is an island unto itself. Even companies such as Wal-Mart, IBM, or Toyota face stiff competition. A challenge that companies such as these face is one of not becoming complacent or over confident in their business dealings. Their competitive environments are complex. These companies are continually challenged by issues related to technology, government regulation, society, politics, the economy, the natural environment and human health. To say that they cannot predict all future outcomes would be an understatement. Indeed one important effect of globalization and the Internet has been a dramatic increase in amount of information facing businesses as well as the overall intensity of competition.

Despite their inability to predict the future, managers do need to reduce the uncertainty that they face in order to plan and conduct business affairs in a profitable and efficient manner. One tool that is available to help managers reduce uncertainty is a scenario analysis. Developed within the Shell Oil company to address uncertainties related to the 1973 oil crisis, scenario analysis and scenario planning are now among the most widely used planning processes in the corporate sector and are commonly taught in Business schools around the world. Analysts practicing competitive intelligence can use Scenario Analysis to think through environmental challenges in the same manner as the executives in the companies that they are studying.

Assignment

This assignment seeks to help you understand the answer to a broader concern and that is, “How might managers perform a simple scenario analysis for their company? You should base your responses to the following questions on your analysis of the company that you have chosen for this course.

Please answer the following questions:

· Identify 6 to 8 trends facing the industry within which your company operates.

· Identify 4 to 6 uncertainties facing your company.

· For each of these uncertainties, offer a measurement scale (high, low; hot cold; light heavy).

· From these uncertainties, pick the two with the highest potential impact on your company. Please justify your choices.

· From these two uncertainties create three scenarios of the future 24 months from now.

· Scenarios should be labeled, best case, worst case and moderate case.

· Please suggest which scenario is most likely and why.

· In one half page, please summarize what you think is the connection between the key insights of the Shoemaker (1995) reading and this assignment.