Facilities Analysis &
Environmental Issues
View
Template for: Facilities Analysis & Environmental Issues
Facilities Analysis
The purpose of this section is to discuss the current state of all office
and other building facilities in use, and to identify the future needs of the
business regarding facilities. For many businesses, this section is a good
candidate for elimination. For other businesses, it is vital.
In general, however, the importance of location and facilities planning is
often underestimated. Competitive strategy and competitive advantage involve
more than just narrowly analyzing the product or service provided. A firm's cost
structure and ability to differentiate are often greatly affected by the firm's
physical facilities. The number and cost of the firm's physical locations,
and the distance between locations, are often important strategic factors, as
well as the specific locations themselves.
Information sharing is also greatly affected by where employees are
located relative to other departments. For example, companies that relocate
all of their information systems people in one (low-cost, out-of-the-way)
location are most likely to find their business managers behind the information
technology learning curve because of the lack of personal interaction between
the two groups.
How the firm's facilities are decorated can also represent a major cost; and
it too can represent a purchase criteria at those facilities visited by
customers. Both the location and the condition of facilities affect employee
morale and worker productivity.
In practice, it can be very informative to talk to one or more of the
leading firms which specialize in location services. The amount of
information they maintain (on building costs, local labor costs, local labor
skills, and government regulations) can be quite enlightening.
Environmental Issues
For most businesses, environmental exposure is usually a non-issue or a
major issue, there is no in between. If environmental exposure and
environmental liability are issues at your firm, they should be discussed fully
because of their major implications to future profitability.
Prior to making an acquisition, it is a good idea to make sure that there are
no 'unknown' environmental exposure problems facing the target company.
For some companies, it is also becoming important that their customers and
suppliers are not facing environmental problems as well. Customer credit
risk and supplier bankruptcy risk are only part of the firm's concern. The U.S.
'environmental cleanup' is a tangled legal mess that can affect most any company
somehow 'connected' with a primary responsible party [to the environmental
exposure].
| 
