Business Analysis for Consulting Engagements Need Not Be Complex. Here’s How I Do It.
Steal my quick and dirty approach for your consulting work, especially if you are a 1-Man consultant.
Have you been to a restaurant?
I am sure you have. And that is great because you have a mental benchmark to understand what business analysis is about.
The restaurant analogy explains the following.
- The sub-domains in a restaurant
- What they do and how they operate
- How they affect each other
Understanding the working mechanics behind a restaurant is business analysis.
And capturing this business snapshot allows 1-Man consultants to propose process improvements and digital transformation deals.
Case Study: A Profitable Restaurant in Your Neighborhood
I believe in site surveys.
And studying a restaurant is the simplest way to understand what business analysis is about. There is one more plus. Restaurants are everywhere. We can choose one to study while lunching.
There is one caveat.
You must choose a profitable restaurant.
I hear your objections. You might scream how do I know whether that restaurant is profitable or not?!
Fair enough. In that case, choose a restaurant with a long line of prospective diners waiting to enter. Make sure there are many tables occupied by diners too.
This is important because you cannot analyze a business when the chef, cashier, and owner are swatting flies by the side.
You want to study how people interact with each other in a business environment. Steve Jobs says it best.
My model for business is The Beatles. There were four guys who kept each other’s, kind of, negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of its parts. And that’s how I see business. You know, great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.
Observe and Mentally Document All Sub-Domains of a Restaurant Business
It is not complicated. Let me rattle off the usual suspects.
- The queue outside the restaurant
- The table seated with new entrants
- The table occupied by existing diners
- The crew connecting the dining area with the kitchen
- The kitchen staff works on all orders, producing food as fast as possible
- The cashier till where bills are tabulated and customer survey is informally executed
As you make your observations, mentally index and demarcate the different zones of the restaurants. Ask questions specific to that zone.
Let me pick the queue outside the restaurant as an example.
These are the possible questions.
- How long does it take for a diner to get a table?
- Does the waiting time change during lunch & dinner time?
- What is the acceptable waiting time for the prospective diner to get seated?
Keep questioning and listing down the possible questions that pop into your head. They will come in handy in the later sections.
What Sub-Domains Do and How They Operate
Observing all the sub-domain of a restaurant and understanding what they are is one form of high-level analysis. And then, we drill down.
Studying each sub-domain in its entirety allows us to understand what it is and how they generate business for the restaurant business.
Let me return to the queue example.
A queue of diners represents the following to me.
- Pent-up demand for consumer purchase
- Pre-sales stage of the value chain
- Conversion opportunity
Having more customers waiting is analogous to a sale pipeline. Naturally, we want the sales pipeline to grow so we can always have prospects to work on.
At the same time, prospects can drop out of the sales pipeline if they are not attended to. This is especially evident in the restaurant business.
So, we must find ways to keep the prospects in the queue. A glass of iced water during summer or passing them an iPad to view the menu is conventional alternatives we see in this business.
Business process improvements can be proposed by 1-Man consultants for the following.
- Allow for pre-ordering — Lock the customers before they leave
- Have the kitchen prepare their food while prospects are still queueing
And that brings me to the 3rd section.
Analyze How the Different Sub-Domains Interact With Each Other
Let us assume you are working on a consulting engagement to reduce queue dropouts.
And you propose the principal solution of pre-ordering as they queue.
It may sound like a pure digital-based process improvement from a menu plus online ordering perspective. But no, the improvement proposal sends shockwaves to all connecting sub-domains.
- The kitchen must have the capacity to handle pre-orders
- The restaurant crew must make sure that existing diners leave when they are done
- The cleaning support must make there are enough plates to be sent to the kitchen for pre-orders
Improving one aspect of a business is (in reality) improving every moving piece of the machine.
And business analysis is a knowledge-based skill set that allows us to ascertain the magnitude of shockwaves sent to the entire business based on the consulting work we offer.
In short, business analysis is the tactical element of eco-system thinking.
Parting Keynotes
Business analysis is a critical skill set for 1-Man consultants.
We cannot avoid impacting our client’s business with our proposal for process improvements. Understanding how every sub-domain connects allows us to assess the potential impact of our work.
And in fact, presenting our business analysis to the client C-Level helps to get buy-in for our consulting engagement.
Because… clients get a sense of assurance that we have deep knowledge of their business and we know what we are doing.
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure. Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.
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