Analysis of Business Problem: requirement of attention to details

Analysis of business problems is course that requires practice not because it is a software-based practice because that would be data analytics. It requires practice because of the uniqueness of cases where some cases drive you immediately to deciding between two options or making analysis of different options to know the worst case or best-case scenario. These analyses have a structure which helps to arrange one’s analysis in details so as to communicate what the thought processes that led to the decision was. I have mentioned them in a previous post so I will explain them in this write up. The steps in analyzing a business problem are

1. Read through the case to pick out relevant information. Not that some information is useless but some information only gives a more vivid picture of the relevant information. For example: a company has started experiencing gross loss is the important information one would need in analysis but information on the break down on how the loss affected each product in the store would be irrelevant when the analysis is not concerned with the products but the stores total loss and the options considered are; remain in that location or move to another. So, it gives a vivid information but it is not important in the analysis.

• After picking out the relevant information, create the problem statement of the case. This will contain the major factors involved in the case like who is affected? with what? How? When? Where? And the challenging question facing the who in the case of what to do. For example, Motion pictures limited has experienced an incident for the first time since inception in 2000 at one of their studios located in west Virginia being their highest income generating studio. The incident was a power surge that fried many equipment used in production. Motion pictures is confused as to how this happened when they had hired Safe-Tech; an engineering company to install and put in place proper safety measures to avoid this exact kind of scenario. They are also considering the possibility of this incident being cause by employee carelessness with controls. should motion pictures just take this as a hand of God incident and move on by reporting this to the stakeholders and request for funds to rebuild the studio or investigate more and see if it was a fault of the engineering company or the quality of their work and use their legal right to sue?

• The next step would be to state the objective. For example, to have the studio back and running as soon as possible with the best-case scenario of cost.
• After setting the objective which is what success would look like for the company, we will compare our alternatives with criteria: these are factors that can be compared across the alternatives for example, time, cost, impact on brand, customers response etc.
• Decide based on your analysis
• State its limitations of that decision.
• Recommend actions or measures to cushion the impacts of these limitations.

I hope this helps you next time you are presented with a business case. Thank you for reading