Multinational companies can gain valuable insight into the European business environment through common scanning tools used for this purpose. Ray (2009) provides strategic assessment frameworks, such as SWOT and PEST analyses. These tools are convenient algorithms that allow one to assess the characteristics of specific businesses comprehensively, including their strengths and weaknesses, influencing factors, and some other criteria. When applied to the European environment, these strategic frameworks can be useful as mechanisms to highlight particular business conditions and drivers that influence the character of entrepreneurial work.
The data collection process itself needs to comply with certain principles of analysis and evaluation. As Ray (2009) notes, any information should be filtered to save time and highlight the most significant and unique features of a particular business environment. Many European businesses have high-profit margins and are internationally recognized. Therefore, filtering information about their modes of operation, entrepreneurial strategies, and other characteristics can help find those nuances and aspects that distinguish specific organizations from those outside Europe or a specific European country.
To begin with, the main task to implement to obtain the necessary data is to determine the nature of the information and interested parties who need to learn and analyze it. According to Ray (2009), from the variety of data on the specifics of a particular business environment, certain aspects may be irrelevant and unimportant. Thus, before drawing conclusions concerning the sustainability and characteristics of enterprises’ work, the most useful information should be highlighted, for instance, financial statements, technical characteristics of production, and other accurate data.
From the perspective of the specifics of the business process, market participants can pay attention to wide environmental factors that determine the nuances of production, marketing, and other processes in the European environment. Ray (2009) refers to such factors as the parameters of inflation, exchange rate, unemployment, import-export channels, and some other macroeconomic characteristics. However, for more accurate information, obtaining narrower data is valuable. In the face of the need to learn about the specifics of European business, Calof et al. (2018) pay attention to such a factor as competitive intelligence. According to the authors, this procedure is associated with foresight, which, in turn, allows for determining the corresponding trends and nuances of entrepreneurial activities that are characteristic of a particular enterprise (Calof et al., 2018). This may be more difficult for non-European companies to apply such tools to analyze the European business environment due to distinctive regulations and operating conditions in the region. Therefore, the analysis of management practices, development ways, and other characteristics of the development of European enterprises requires assessing the local nuances of the current entrepreneurship with its conditions and principles to evaluate it correctly and objectively.
At the same time, environmental scanning tools can be less deep. For instance, Ray (2009) provides an example of interacting with specialized agencies or consultants who carry out the necessary analytical work and find out the information for customers. Moreover, due to technological advances, such data can be obtained remotely by utilizing web services and applications, thus avoiding the involvement of third parties in analytical activities (Ray, 2009). As a result, the key factors to take into account to understand the European business environment are the tasks of searching for specific information, the peculiarities of data to analyze, as well as factors affecting the specifics of entrepreneurial activities in a particular region, including its financial, legislative, and other regulations.
References
Calof, J., Arcos, R., & Sewdass, N. (2018). Competitive intelligence practices of European firms. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 30(6), 658-671. Web.
Ray, D. (2009). European business. The University of London.