Performing Key Analyses

Course 2 of the Business Planning Series

What you'll learn
Describe how the results of an internal analysis inform a business plan
Recognize how to conduct an external analysis
Identify market influences that may affect your business plan
Determine how a SWOT analysis affects a business plan in a given scenario
Requirements
No special requirements or prerequisites
Description
Welcome to the Performing Key Analyses course! This is course 2 of the Business Planning Series.Organizations have always had to plan for the future. Currently, however, the ability to develop and implement strategic plans is more important than ever. Managers need to look at the big picture to better understand what will and won't work for their companies. They must determine where potential obstacles might exist, and how a proposed initiative – no matter how big or small – would support a company's vision and objectives.Say you want to plan your department's future activities to support your organization's strategic objectives. What would a good business plan look like? It should include a thorough review of the internal and external environment to determine how your idea fits in the business and market contexts.An internal analysis examines your organization's strengths and weaknesses. An external analysis tries to anticipate opportunities and threats in the political, economic, societal, and technological environment – for instance, a PEST analysis. You need to conduct internal and external analyses regularly. This will help promote creativity, uncover opportunities and challenges, and ensure a more effective review process.This course looks at how to use internal and external analyses of your company to guide you in developing business plans. An internal analysis involves assessing your company's market strategy and resources, evaluating organization and management strategy, and evaluating your organization's financial position. You'll then learn about the factors to consider when analyzing your external environment. This includes a PEST analysis and scenario planning. You'll then learn how to conduct a SWOT analysis of your organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.That’s it! Now go ahead and hit that “Take this course!” button and see you on the inside!

Overview

Section 1: Business Planning

Lecture 1 Program Overview

Lecture 2 Program Guidelines

Section 2: Performing Key Analyses

Lecture 3 Course Overview

Lecture 4 Using an Internal Analysis to Guide Business Planning

Lecture 5 Benefits of business plans

Lecture 6 Conducting an internal analysis

Lecture 7 Market strategy

Lecture 8 Resources

Lecture 9 Organization and management strategy

Lecture 10 Financial position

Lecture 11 Conducting an Internal Analysis

Lecture 12 An Internal Analysis

Lecture 13 Analyzing the External Environment

Lecture 14 External analysis - PEST

Lecture 15 External analysis - scenario planning

Lecture 16 Examining the External Environment

Lecture 17 Market analysis - customer groups

Lecture 18 Market analysis - competitors

Lecture 19 Market analysis - industry

Lecture 20 Market Analysis

Lecture 21 Identifying Opportunities and Challenges

Lecture 22 What is a SWOT?

Lecture 23 Conducting a SWOT analysis

Lecture 24 Using a SWOT for your business plan

Lecture 25 Blazerfire's SWOT

Lecture 26 Performing Key Analyses

Business leaders, professionals, and managers who want to gain or refine their skills for planning and developing strategic business plans