Page 99 - PRAGMATIC STRATEGY

SECOND STEP

GIVE A MORE DETAILED APPRECIATION OF THE SITUATION

The objective here is to gain a more detailed picture of what is going

on. What are the key issues to be resolved? How are they to be
prioritized? These may be answered by extending the usefulness of
the available information by combining these in ways that create new

information by constructing for example:

• a chronological listing of events, noting significant proximities or

intervals.
• Assemble figures into useful tables ;

e.g. employees/department,

sales/product.

- develop a statistical analysis of sources of sales revenue (note Pareto

analysis, 80% of firm's products often provide only 20% of sales
revenue).

- note the variability of historical profit figures, or

- construct a graph outlining e.g. cumulative growth of the firm's retail
outlets.

Develop an organization chart.

• Often the organisational chart which is presented in the accounts is a
static representation which does not display the true relationships
which exists in the organisation
• note the links between variables in the case, e.g. Profit/Sales for
each product.
• Calculate key financial ratios.