TRENDS - SEVEN ANALYTICAL METHODS

A method used to analyze an industry's attractiveness and likely profitability. 

A study undertaken by an organization to identify its internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as its external opportunities and threats.

It is a model well designed to help company strategists assess a competitor's intent and objectives, and the strengths it is using to achieve them. It is a useful technique to evaluate competitors and generate insights concerning likely competitor strategy changes and determine competitor reaction to environmental changes and industry shifts.

It is used to detect or predict important events as early as possible. They may be used to understand where competitors are likely to attack the business from and assess the probability that a given scenario will happen.

An analysis that helps a company understands how it adds value to something and subsequently how it can sell its product or service for more than the cost of adding the value, thereby generating a profit margin. In other words, if they are run efficiently the value obtained should exceed the costs of running them i.e. customers should return to the organisation and transact freely and willingly.

A type of analysis where senior managers play their own company, a select group of their competitors and the marketplace. A control team plays all other entities that affect the industry. The game begins with a prepared set of business conditions and, when the whistle blows, anything goes - that is, anything that can happen in the real world, including mergers & acquisitions and natural disasters. When the dust has settled, the authors say, managers look back on these simulations as one of the most challenging and stimulating exercises of their careers. The sessions actually last several days.

It is a useful tool for understanding market growth or decline, and as such the position, potential and direction for a business.