Any person who is related to business or is going to do it often thinks that the main thing is to draw up a good business plan and organize the company’s activities, and good results can be achieved. But this is not so. The success of an organization is influenced not only by the coherence of internal structural elements, but also by the surrounding reality, which tends to constantly change. To analyze the characteristics of the external environment, to predict the risks for the enterprise and use the changes to their advantage is one of the tasks of the management. The skillful monitoring of factors outside the organization and coordination of actions in accordance with their state is the key to the success of the company.
The development and activity of the enterprise is influenced by a variety of indicators, such as inflation, consumer demand, exchange rates, features of the country's culture, customs tariffs, the activities of foreign competitors and much more. Environmental characteristics should always be considered in strategic planning.
Organization Structure
Any company is a symbiosis of interconnected elements that make up the internal environment. This includes employees, technologies used in production, the structure of the enterprise, the goals of its development, corporate culture, production techniques and more. But the most important factor is precisely the personnel, since in many respects the success of an enterprise depends on their qualifications, motivation, attitude to work and focus on results.
Component companies
In the internal environment, as a rule, several subsystems can be distinguished:
- social (this includes workers at various levels);
- organizational (this is the labor regime, the distribution of powers and duties between employees);
- informational (covers all information about the company);
- production and technical (includes basic means of production, such as technical equipment, raw materials, etc.).
The formation of the constituent elements of an enterprise is influenced by its goals and objectives, as well as financial and material capabilities.
Relationship with the environment
Each company exists in certain conditions of the modern world, and they somehow affect it. The external environment itself is a combination of factors that directly or indirectly affect the work of the organization. For different companies, it is individual, since in the presence of common elements it has characteristics inherent only to it.
Elements of influence on the enterprise
Environmental factors of the organization are:
- customers (buyers) - they manage the demand and price of goods and services;
- partners (suppliers of goods);
- competitors;
- the state and its structural divisions;
- culture and morality;
- economy;
- politics;
- international relationships.
In this structure of the external environment, it is necessary first of all to single out the indicators that most actively influence the work of the organization.
External and internal environment of the enterprise are closely interconnected. The effectiveness of the structural units of the company largely depends on various indicators of the surrounding world, which often change, therefore, strategic planning should be carried out taking into account their current state and expected changes.
Direct Impact Indicators
All elements of reality that are important for the enterprise can be divided into two groups: factors of direct impact and indirect (respectively, micro and macro environment of the organization).
The first group includes:
- suppliers (entities that provide the necessary resources for the activities of the company);
- consumers (they form the demand for goods or services of this organization);
- competitors (provide a similar offer for consumers in the market);
- intermediaries (ensure the movement of goods from the company to customers, credit support for transactions, own sales, organization sales promotion);
- contact audiences (human resources, state regulatory agencies, media, the public, companies providing audit and consulting services).
At the same time, there is an interconnectedness of environmental factors, so they also affect each other.
Indirect Impact Factors
The second group consists of elements that do not have a direct impact on the management of the organization, but their condition significantly affects the activities of the company. These are factors that indicate the current state of the economy as a whole, namely: the state of the country's economy, political changes, international relations, group interests, the development of scientific and technological progress and social culture.
It must be understood that all of the above indicators are interconnected, and decisions made by the company directly depend on the relationship of a particular element of the external environment with a segment in the structure of the organization. For example, the economy directly affects the cost, profitability and profit, natural factors affect the suppliers of raw materials and the need to find new suppliers in the event of the depletion of the former, the demographic situation - the market and consumer demand, etc. Therefore, the analysis of environmental factors of the organization should not be carried out separately, but in the system and taking into account what changes will entail a change in at least one element and how it will affect the activities of the enterprise as a whole.
Ways to increase efficiency
In order to qualitatively calculate the state of the above characteristics, you need to have a group of employees (or the appropriate department) who will study the external and internal environment, analyze the organization’s activities over a long period, consider publications in specialized sources, conduct discussions within the company, participate in thematic conferences, etc.
A very successful option is when management determines a set of only those environmental objects that affect the success of the company more than others, develops and offers ways to quickly respond to them. This allows you to qualitatively control the impact of many elements on the effectiveness of the organization, as well as prevent the emergence of risks for it.
Properties of influencing elements
When analyzing the indicators of reality, one must take into account the characteristics of the external environment. We single out the main ones.
- The relationship of factors. Their study should be systematic, since a change in some components almost always entails a change in others.
- Difficulty: some elements are influenced by all elements, and only some by others. Enterprises that use many rapidly developing technologies will find themselves in a more difficult situation, because they run the risk of experiencing threats to economic security.
- Mobility is the speed at which environmental factors develop. The pace of their changes is simply rapid. And it is this indicator that creates instability for the development of the company. Before deciding on innovations (developing a type of product, changing used technologies, increasing sales volumes, etc.), it is necessary to take into account this particular parameter, since if it is ignored, there is a threat to the efficiency of the enterprise.
- Uncertainty is the amount of information in a company as of the above factors and its reliability. The lack of information or their distortion does not allow to objectively assess the conditions in which the company operates and their impact on the organization.
With a high level of uncertainty, there are two ways to solve the problem.
1) Adaptation of the enterprise to changes in the external environment, that is, the creation of a flexible internal structure that will allow constant monitoring of the state of factors and instantly respond to its changes by making important decisions and redistributing functions and tasks between employees.
2) Direct impact on the performance of the world through advertising, competition, public relations and participation in the political life of the country.
That is, we can say that the external environment is those factors that are outside the organization, but with which it interacts and which are, in a way, conditions for its activities.
The value of reality analysis
The value of environmental monitoring for an organization depends on the type of economy and market model. So, under the command economy, everything was decided by the state, so the influence of factors from the outside was minimal and did not require study by enterprises. In a modern market economy, companies are self-operating units that develop according to strategic planning at your own risk. Therefore, the value of the indicators of reality has increased significantly, and the result of the organization’s activity now directly depends on the characteristics of the external environment.
The reality surrounding us is quite variable. And all changes must be taken into account for the efficient operation of the enterprise. A correct assessment of the situation in the world around us makes it possible to predict threats to economic security, correctly plan further steps for the development of the organization, increase the positive influence of factors and reduce the negative. In today's fast-paced world, only the company that will successfully rebuild and adapt to the external environment will be able to achieve success and maintain it.