Make your
next business idea a success with an iMindMap PESTLE Analysis
July 25th, 2017 by
iMindMap
As an
entrepreneur, your brain is often overflowing with ideas for new ventures that
you hope will bring further commercial success. But how can you know if your
next service or product is viable? And is the current marketplace ready for it?
Conduct a PESTLE
Analysis using iMindMap to decide.
There are
numerous factors that affect the environment surrounding any business, and how
well these factors are understood and responded to will determine its success
or failure. It’s crucial that every organisation identifies these factors and
takes them into careful consideration before taking the plunge. These forces
may be beyond your control, but to ignore them would be fatal for a business.
Once external environmental factors have been identified, you will be in a
stronger position to create a sound business plan that sets you on the road to
success.
The PESTLE Analysis is
a framework that can be used to analyse the macro-environmental factors that
may have an impact on your organisation – political, economic, social,
technological, legal, environmental. It can be used to gain insight into the
current landscape surrounding your current or future business. By researching
each of these factors using iMindMap you can soundly identify any potential
threats to your business and adjust your strategy accordingly. Mind Mapping
your analysis will give you an adaptable overview of the current
macro-environment.
Political: manage sudden changes with an adaptable
overview
The stability –
or instability – of the government in power will have a big impact on your
business decisions. In iMindMap’s
Mind Map View, create a Mind Map to act as a one-page overview of the current
political climate for a simplistic summary.
Add main branches to
highlight important policies, laws, foreign relationships, trade restrictions,
etc. and use child branches to add in extra details. How do these affect your
business model? As we know, politics is a fast-paced sector where sudden
changes are common. Save your digital Mind Map so that it can be quickly
updated at any time, keeping your overview up to date with all political
affairs and putting you in a stronger position to overcome any undesirable
changes.
Economic: turn dreary reports into visual interest
Economic factors will play a huge
part in determining the success and profitability of your business as they
influence how consumers spend their money. Consider factors such as economic
growth, (un)employment, austerity measures, exchange rates, inflation and so
on.
For many of us, making
sense of facts and figures can become overwhelming. Pick out the key
information that is relevant to your future or current business and present
these in a Mind Map. iMindMap’s Mind Map View allows you to create a visual
report that is easy to digest. Your Mind Map can include images to represent
the most crucial aspects of today’s economic landscape. Upload your own graphs
and snippets from your research as JPEGs and insert these into your Mind Map.
You can use coloured icons to indicate which economic factors present
opportunities and threats to your business. Knowledge is power, and this visual
report will fortify your business plan without getting weighed down with
irrelevant information.
Social: profile society’s buying habits with a rich
resource hub
The social
factors refer to the shared attitudes and beliefs of consumers that can affect
their buying habits. These factors can include age, education, family, health,
lifestyle etc. Follow reports in the media to stay aware of any trends that
could influence these factors.
Use iMindMap’s
Mind Map View to build a detailed profile of the society that you will be
targeting. Will your product or service be desirable in today’s society? Create
a reliable resource hub by inserting links to relevant websites, attaching
important reports or uploading significant infographics that you come across in
your research and attach them to your Mind Map’s branches. Your attachments
remain hidden until clicked, so your overview of social trends will always pack
a hidden punch.
Technological: will the next big tech trend affect your business?
The rate that
technology is advancing is enormous; blink and you will miss the next big
thing. In the past, longstanding organisations have suddenly crashed by failing
to spot a technological trend that overtook their business. It may be necessary
to adjust your business plan in order to exploit new trends in technology and
make them work for you.
Whilst
conducting your research on current and future technological trends, create a
Mind Map to support your findings. With the radiating nature of its branches,
along with the use of single keywords, a Mind Map spurs creative thinking and highlights
key connections between ideas, allowing you to spot trends before they
materialise. It is an ideal tool for problem-solving as its framework sparks
innovative ideas that will place your business ahead of the curve.
Legal: quick access to the most important facts
Businesses need
to have a sound understanding of what is legal and how laws can impact the work
they do. Legal factors can include employment legislation, consumer law, health
and safety, advertising standards and trade regulations. Can your business
thrive while staying within the law?
Once you have conducted
research in this area, display your findings in a Mind Map. With organisations
having to conform to so many different and ever-changing legal factors, it is
crucial to have quick access to important facts to avoid breaking any laws.
Assign tags to branches on your ‘Legal’ Mind Map to group together related
concepts. Save time by using these tags to filter through a vast amount of
information. iMindMap’s powerful filtering system helps you to instantly find
the relevant facts whenever you may need them.
Environmental: share your ethical business plan
Environmental
factors relate to the ecological aspects surrounding your business such as
climate change, global warming and weather. These days, businesses are expected
to stay within pollution limits, set sustainability objectives and comply with
ethical standards that lead to a minimal impact on the environment.
Organisations fulfilling their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are more
desirable to consumers. Businesses must be seen to be conducting themselves in
an ethical and sustainable way in order to survive in today’s marketplace.
While conducting
research in this area, consider how your business could play its part in minimising
its carbon footprint. Can you source supplies ethically and sustainably? What
recycling procedures will be put in place? These are the kind of questions that
your consumers and investors will be asking. Why not use iMindMap to create an
‘Environmental’ Mind Map that gives a visual overview of every ethical effort
you will be making? When your Mind Map is complete, export it as a PDF to email
to internal and external stakeholders to ensure that your plans are well
publicised. You could even make this Mind Map available to download from your
website, so that potential clients have easy access to your environmental
plans.
A PESTLE Analysis will help
any organisation stay aware of their macro-environment. Although these external
elements are beyond control, using iMindMap to keep an up to date and adaptable
overview of the current landscape, will help businesses to spot future trends
and respond quickly and positively to any changes that otherwise could impact
commercial success.
Md. Nasir Khan
Director
Central Academic Research & Development
(CARD), Manipur Creative School
ThinkBuzan Licensed Instructor
MindMap, iMindMap, MemorySkills,
SpeedReading & CreativeTeaching
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