What do we do? 

We do business with a little bit of fun!

We could start by saying that Business Analysis is a combination of tasks, knowledge and methods necessary to identify the needs of a business or to determine the solutions for the problems it faces. Or that it is used in the business context to increase efficiencies, justify decisions and predict situations.

But more simple, we could say that by the analysis of a business it is defined its current state, the future desired state and is identified everything necessary for the transition between the two.

Why do we do it?

We are a small team that tries to change the world one small business at the time.

We want to put to good use the knowledge we have acquired by offering small businesses analysis services, in order to help them grow, provide the best services that they can and improve their relationships with the staff, partners, clients and the community overall.

What types of analysis do we perform?

Well, pretty much everything can be analysed, as long as it doesn’t require very specific specialized skills. We can analyse the product, the service and the relationship with the customer; the internal processes and the logistics; the price and the costs; the promotions, marketing, sales and the accessibility, availability and communication on the market; the execution personnel and the administrative one; the partners and the collaborations; the business environment and the competition.

Why do you need it?

Remember when you last asked someone “What do you think about this?”? You were asking for a fresh eye, a different perspective, another opinion and maybe a friendly advice. Essentially, this is the same thing, just on a more professional and bigger scale.

One of the differences is that, unlike others, we’re not here to tell you what you’re doing wrong. We’re here to tell you what you can do better… or different… or easier… or faster… or cheaper.

Take for example the story of Bob, a small restaurant owner. Bob’s employees keep leaving after a few months on the job and he doesn’t know why, or how to fix it. Bob doesn’t have much free time, but he tried anyway to spend some of it talking to his employees about any issue they would have… and he got nothing. Well now it’s time for Bob to ask for help.

What are the steps?

As we earlier said, the scope of the whole process is to reach a certain state of the business. To show off the steps, let’s make a simple analogy for easier understanding:

1. define finish point (point B)

So the first step would be to define that desired state that we want to achieve as detailed as possible and the meaning of reaching it.

Let’s go back to Bob’s story… Bob has a problem that needs fixing. So his point B is the moment when his staff becomes stabil and his employees don’t leave him anymore.

2. define starting point (point A)

Secondly we have to determine the current state of the business, what’s our base, where we start at. Here we do the research, we evaluate everything we need… the processes, the product, the service, the team, the culture of the business, the relationship with clients/partners/suppliers, the costs, marketing activities, logistics, place on the market, few direct competitors, etc.

This step in the process is the most time consuming because we need all the information that we acquire to be as precise and accurate as it possibly can. Our future decisions will be based on it and taking good decisions based on bad (or not enough) information is as faulty as taking bad decisions in the first place.

In Bob’s case, we analyse the employees, the work environment, the client service, whatever we suspect we need to get at the bottom of his problem.
Remember Bob tried to talk to his employees? That didn’t help because nobody wanted to really talk to the boss, or complain or create other issues. So Bob didn’t have enough information and what he had, was probably not accurate.

3. identify and implement requirements (C=B-A=?)

Having acquired all the needed information, we are now able to identify what we need to do in order to get from our state to the desired one. These requirements might determine some changes, some updates, some new solutions or ideas. In this step we propose the different solutions in order to find the most convenient one for the business, in a timeline and within an agreed budget.

If after the first implementation somehow arise more requirements that were not considered before, we repeat this step as long as it takes to have everything in order. 

After analysing Bob’s business, we realize that not all employees are leaving him, just the ones on certain positions. And it appears that the financial stimulent of the tips has caused frustration to the employees working in the back of the restaurant, or having more secondary roles in the service of the clients. This frustration accumulated in time caused issues in the work environment between employees and the less happy ones ended up quitting, causing Bob’s problem.
So, in order to fix his problem, we have to fix the frustration issue. Now, in the light of the new findings Bob hurried up and decided to modify the fixed salary of the service staff taking in consideration an estimated monthly amount of tip. You know, american style.
As you can imagine, part of Bob’s employees are not really happy with the decision that he took. They don’t like to depend so much on the tip which can vary a lot from month to month. This would have come out if he would have had patience and had let his analyst inquire a bit more. Now he has a problem with the second part of the staff. But you know Bob, he cares about his employees and wants all of them to be happy in order to stay loial and work hard for him. So after more analysis, he decides to leave everybody’s salary fixed, gather the tip at the end of each day and distribute it equally between all employees.
Guess what… Again, this caused some frustration because the tip depends more on the attitude of the servers and they argue that their input in the process is larger therefore the remuneration should be also. In addition to this, there are different shifts of different hours so in order to be fair to everybody Bob got a formula from his analyst, based on which he could split the amount of the tip correctly, according to everybody’s efforts and input.

4. final check/testing (A+C=B?) 

In the end, we check if all the requirements are met and if all processes are running in order. We have to evaluate again the state of the business and see if the criteria for the final state is reached. If it is, then we consider the project a success, and if not, we go back to the thinking board, find different solutions and repeat the process.

In Bob’s case, we follow up to see if the issues of the employees have now been solved completely or they need a bit more motivation.
So, learn from Bob. Ask for help to solve your problems.