Environmental Scanning

Environmental scanning is a concept from business management by which businesses gather information from the environment, to better achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. To sustain competitive advantage the company must also respond to the information gathered from environmental scanning by altering its strategies and plans when the need arises.
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the process of examining the internal and external factors which influence the firm's operations and decision making in order to identify market opportunities and threats.

auditing the external environment in the planning process.