Simulation 5. Management Information System

How do businesses keep their ‘eyes’ open to changes in the business environment?

ColmarCo is aware that it will have to constantly reinvent itself to be able to keep up with emerging trends and discontinuities which will have a knock-on effect upon its customers, suppliers, competitors and the legal, fiscal and political systems.

Although ‘within its walls’ the business should be ‘master of all it surveys’, and should have almost perfect knowledge, the world outside can be a mystery; and yet it is this external environment which will provide the Opportunities and Threats for the business.  Those who actively seek to engage with, research, understand and respond to the challenges presented by the business environment are likely to be the ones that survive and grow at the expense of competitors.  Ignoring what is going on ‘outside its walls’ is a fatal mistake for a company: one ColmarCo must not make.

• How can ColmarCo develop a Management Information System that records the critical changes in the business environment and delivers such information to ColmarCo managers in the right form, in the right place, at the right time?