Community surveys can assist in assessing local ‘buy-in’ as well as identifying potential volunteers who might be interested in supporting a community-led venture to sustain a vital service. You can download the volunteer survey template below.

It will still be important to gain an insight into the industry analysis and market analysis to ensure the business can be sustainable, but also to consider options to lever other resources to support the business activity or diversify to offer a wider range of services.

Industry analysis

Besides your customers, you need to know the industry or service environment that you are planning to join. Industry analysis helps you to assess if it will be profitable for you to operate in this market/industry. It is worth considering your geography and context, as footfall and access to customers may be more challenging in a rural context and this should also be taken into account when considering the industry analysis.

It also provides you with insights that might encourage you to search for new ways to operate or develop your product/service. The following resources offer you basic information about industries and what they are, and how to complete and use an industry analysis.

External market environment analysis

What is happening in the wider economic environment? What phenomena are important for us?

PEST or PESTEL analysis is a tool for analysing your market environment at the macro level, both in its current state and in the future. It can help you to picture which macro-level issues might affect your enterprise, and identify new opportunities for you in the market.

Who are your competitors? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What are they offering, how are they distributing, and how do they price their products? What does their future look like?

Competitors are other central actors that influence your enterprise opportunity. They may be enterprises that resemble yours, or they may be quite different kind of enterprises that produce something that could substitute for the product that you are planning to produce.

In a rural context there may not be direct competitors locally, however there may be alternative sources via internet purchasing. Your rural context will have a direct influence on the level of competition. Therefore, keep your mind open when you are defining your competitors as they may operate in completely different industries.

A useful starting point is to undertake a competitor analysis: 

Competitor analysis is not only about finding ways to beat your competitors and assessing whether there is room for you in the market, but also a good way to learn from enterprises that have already done many things right.

While you are already analysing other enterprises, you could also search for more good examples for benchmarking or collaboration.

Stakeholder analysis

The chapter on Stakeholder Engagement in Module 1 – Community Involvement, provides useful information on how to connect with the range of stakeholders with an interest or influence on your social enterprise.

In order to assess your market opportunity, you first need to identify all the relevant stakeholders and consider how they are related to your enterprise. A good way to do this is to picture them on a map.

When you have collected enough information, you are able to create a stakeholder impact table where you classify your stakeholders.

Conclusion

You have now collected quite a lot of information about your enterprise and its success opportunity, and it is time to sum up. One way to do that is to use a SWOT analysis, where you list the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats regarding your enterprise plan, or a part of it.

We hope that these analysis tools will help you to assess your enterprise opportunity in a systematic and open way. You can find many other videos and tools online that might support you during the assessment phase. All analysis aspects mentioned before may require a great amount of work. On the other hand, good planning saves your resources in the future.