Internal Scanning
Internal scanning involves looking inside the farm business and identifying strengths and weaknesses and assessing the businesses’ resources and management’s skills. It is part of the strategic planning process. An overview of Strategic Planning for a Farm Business and how internal scanning fits into the planning process is available.
Internal business scanning is comprised of the following three categories:
1. Farm Business - What are the unique strengths and limitations of your business?
2. Individual Person - What are the unique skills and limitations of each person involved in the management of the business?
3. Individual Enterprises - How will each enterprise compete in the marketplace? What are the critical factors that determine the success or failure of each enterprise?
Making a Business Inventory
The first step in internal scanning involves describing your business. This will help you assess the value of the various aspects of your business. Below are four broad categories that can be used to describe your business.
• Physical Resources - The farm business consists of physical resources. These can easily be identified by most farmers and include land, machinery, facilities and other assets.
• Human Resources - The farm business also consists of human resources. These are more difficult to identify. Granted, we can easily name the people involved in the business, but describing what function each person provides for the farm business is more difficult. These include topics such as identifying the management skills of the participants and describing the decision making structure.
• Other Resources - Other farm business resources such as financial resources also need to be identified. For example, the business records will readily identify these from the business financial statements. To identify financial resources you may want to ask yourself if there is adequate working capital. Is there borrowing capacity if needed? Are there outside equity
Internal business scanning is comprised of the following three categories:
1. Farm Business - What are the unique strengths and limitations of your business?
2. Individual Person - What are the unique skills and limitations of each person involved in the management of the business?
3. Individual Enterprises - How will each enterprise compete in the marketplace? What are the critical factors that determine the success or failure of each enterprise?
Making a Business Inventory
The first step in internal scanning involves describing your business. This will help you assess the value of the various aspects of your business. Below are four broad categories that can be used to describe your business.
• Physical Resources - The farm business consists of physical resources. These can easily be identified by most farmers and include land, machinery, facilities and other assets.
• Human Resources - The farm business also consists of human resources. These are more difficult to identify. Granted, we can easily name the people involved in the business, but describing what function each person provides for the farm business is more difficult. These include topics such as identifying the management skills of the participants and describing the decision making structure.
• Other Resources - Other farm business resources such as financial resources also need to be identified. For example, the business records will readily identify these from the business financial statements. To identify financial resources you may want to ask yourself if there is adequate working capital. Is there borrowing capacity if needed? Are there outside equity