E/M/41. The Organisation in its Environment. Scenario Planning for Servisair/Globleground

Organization these days are submerged in a tough global environment that makes uncertainty being one of the most common characteristics around and making the desire of knowing about the future stronger and more needed. From forecasting to even guessing, organizations have always tried to understand how the market (customers, suppliers, demand, etc ) will behave in the future and be ready and prepared for it and develop possible alternatives or strategies that will help them overcome problems, face changes and enhance their businesses. Scenario planning has changed the way organizations try to understand the future and has been increasingly used by corporations such as Shell Petroleum with its ÓShell Global Scenarios to 2025Ô where the impact and boundaries of the analysis could easily be perceived by only reading the title and noticing the importance this analysis is being given by such an important and big multinational like Shell. Scenario planning is method for learning about the future by understanding the nature and impact of the most uncertain and important driving forces affecting our future. Its purpose is to write a number of stories by extrapolating uncertain and influential environmental forces. It is a subjective but analytical perception of the future. This project has developed a set of two scenarios for a airline handling company called Servisair/Globleground by using a scanning and distillation process which went through all the influential market forces which are driving not only the company mentioned before but the whole industry. This distillation process narrowed these forces only to a few which form the bases of the scenarios presented. Servisar/Globeground is a multinational company which belong to an even bigger merge of two major French companies (Penauille and CFF). Therefore, the analysis will cover a global and international framework as it would be foolish trying to restrict this analysis to only a UK environment as we think this would have limited the final result. The final result noted two scenarios that we have called ÓTrade FluÔ and ÓWarming WelcomeÔ. The former represent the collapse of globalisation as itself and the low trust among customers due to global issues such as terrorism and the latter represent the strength of globalisation in a world that is suffering from global warming with extremes climate conditions. Scenario planning can be a powerful tool when developed properly and it could help not only organizations to prevent failures in the future but also for managing changes by thinking of the current environment and being aware of what is driving and influencing the industry, company and the market.