Scenario D

Scenario D. Margarita works for a small company, which processes and cans tomatoes and other vegetables. She reports to the CFO. It is her job to predict the costs of raw materials for the next five years. She uses various research sources including the news to learn who the competition is and what they have been doing. In fact she subscribes to an analyst e-newsletter that tells her about crop availability and weather conditions all around the globe. Every month she develops a spreadsheet for her boss indicating the likely costs of vegetables given the type of weather conditions expected in each area of the world and thus the availability of particular crops. She is also involved in a team that is investigating how to cut canning costs. They have recently met with Good Cans, a company that manufactures and cans tennis balls. Good Cans is considered the top company in the canning industry, especially around canning process knowledge and Margarita's team is comparing their processes to those of Good Cans to see how they might improve.
-The research Margarita is using is called

A) forecasting.
B) competitive intelligence.
C) environmental scanning.
D) benchmarking.
E) scenario development.