Page 52 - The Case Lab Book

e: 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:

1a chronological listing of events, noting significant proximity or
intervals.

2Assemble figures into useful tables ;
e.g.
- employees/department, sales/product.
- develop a statistical analysis of sources 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.
- 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.

1Often 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

2note the links between variables in the case, e.g. Profit/Sales for each
product.
3Calculate key financial ratios.

4Note qualitative relationships;
5Note the degree of precision of information presented. Does
information such as "acceptable levels of product quality" tell us

anything useful?