Environmental Scan

The Environmental Scan looks at our environment holistically to find any things that could impact our business. We use the SCEPTIC approach and spend every quarter one hour at minimum to perform the environmental scan as a team. During the quarter we engage with our direct and indirect stakeholders and note down our observation that we then discuss in the group. Below we describe the different dimensions of the environmental scan, where the first letter of each dimension forms the word “SCEPTIC”.

Society
Some topics we consult on or provide solutions, e.g. genAI, are discussed by the public. We need to follow this discussion from trustworthy resources as our stakeholder in organization may have a certain personal opinion on digital technologies that they don’t voice in their professional capacity, but that has influence on their thinking, their actions and decisions. If we see such discussion in the public space, we may draft a short point of view and put it on LinkedIn and the website to show how we think about it.

Competition
As some of our competitor can also be our partners from a subcontracting perspective, it is important to understand on what topics they are focusing and how our offerings might fit in. That they do what we do is a good sign that there is a market. Of course, we need then to carve out how we differentiate, and this is usually not the hard/technical skill an individual, that we can build up via training and projects, but more the way how we partner with customers and the value we can add on top of (paid) projects.

Economics
Even in a shrinking economy, money will be spent, but often innovation is cut back first in a market that is not doing well. Talking to existing clients and target customers in industry ecosystem give good first-hand information on potential impact on us. Research of renowned market research firms and consultancy and business/economy journals provide additional input.

Politics
This is mainly related to regulations and the impact on the different sectors. We assume that in the industry ecosystems we are plugged in, we can identify relevant developments in politics.

Technology
Again, engagement in industry associations and technology communities, as well as the global research community provide the opportunity to spot technology trends early. The Gartner Hype-Curve may help, but only a small piece of the “information puzzle”.

Industry
Be on industry fairs, like HMI, and industry associations can reveal relevant influencing trends. The challenge is the amount of information available, also on the Internet, so we really need to very carefully choose where we invest our time.

Customers
Especially updates of strategies are always interested to look at, as well as the project portfolio and budget planning for next year, to see opportunity and challenges.