Building a Strategic Plan

External Issues Scanning and Client Segmentation Analysis

The first step in strategic planning is to gather the information needed to understand and identify
the
issues, challenges and trends that will shape and affect a department, office, mission, or
programme
strategy. The result of such input gathering is commonly thought of as external environmental
scanning.
“External” issues refer to all factors with roots outside the entity; they do not necessarily relate to
issues
that come from outside the UN.
It is also important to gather information about the target clients (i.e. those who are the
recipients and
beneficiaries of the services delivered). Such inputs help to identify and understand how to
group clients,
and more importantly, how to characterize their desired outcomes that would result from
receiving the
services.