Business Enquiry, Data and Evaluation Skills

It ends in a decision

Every enquiry you do in other subjects ends when you know something. A science investigation ends with a conclusion about what the results showed. A history enquiry ends with a judgement about a source. A business enquiry is different in one way that changes everything about how you do it: it ends when somebody has to DECIDE something. Somebody is going to read what you found and act on it, or decline to, and that single fact reorganises the whole task. It changes what you gather, because you gather what would help a decision rather than what is interesting. It changes what counts as a good finding, because a finding the business can do nothing about is not much use however true it is. And it changes how you finish, because a business report that stops at what is happening has stopped one step short. So the question running through this module is not what did I find out. It is what can they DO about it. Two related skills live elsewhere on this course and are not repeated here: how to choose a suitable chart or table for a set of data, and how to judge whether a single source can be trusted. What this module covers is the chain from a question, through evidence, to a recommendation somebody could actually act on.

Five words for an enquiry

Two are about the evidence, two about what you do with it, and one about what makes a finding worth having.

Which findings are worth having?

Which research would you do?

A small cafe wants to know why its afternoon trade has fallen. It has a month and almost no budget. Which research would be most useful?

• Ask the customers who still come, and count how many come at each hour for two weeks
• Find national figures on how much people spend on eating out
• Visit the competitor and note everything they do differently
• Survey people in the town centre about cafes in general

Numbers and words do different jobs

Most weak enquiries gather only one kind. They answer half the question and then cannot support a recommendation.

Run an enquiry in this order

Five stages of a business enquiry. Put them into the order that ends somewhere useful.

• Write the question as something a decision could be made about
• Decide what evidence would actually change what the business does
• Gather it, using both numbers and words
• Sort the findings into what they can act on and what they cannot
• Recommend a course of action, and say how they would know it had worked

What a recommendation must contain

Your enquiry is finished and you are writing the recommendation. Which THREE things does it have to contain?

• What specifically the business should do
• Which findings support it, named rather than gestured at
• How they would know afterwards whether it had worked
• Everything you found out during the enquiry
• A guarantee that it will solve the problem

True is not the same as useful

The commonest way a business enquiry goes wrong is not bad research. It is good research that stops one step short, and it always reads the same way: a careful description of what is happening, followed by nothing anybody can act on. Here is the test that prevents it, and it takes one sentence. For every finding, ask whether this business could DO anything differently because of it. A national trend in spending is almost certainly true and there is nothing the owner of one cafe can do about it, so it belongs in the background rather than in the recommendation. A competitor opening nearby is also outside their control, but it is different in kind, because it can be planned around even though it cannot be changed. And a finding about their own opening hours, prices, seating or staffing is inside their control, which is where recommendations come from. Sorting your findings into those three piles before you write anything is twenty minutes that improves a report more than any amount of extra data. There is a second habit worth having. When you have decided what to recommend, ask how the business would know in three months whether it had worked. If you cannot answer that, the recommendation is probably too vague to follow. Improve the customer experience is not something anybody can do on Monday morning. Add four more seats and count afternoon customers for a fortnight is.

Complete the enquiry sentences

Evidence you gather yourself for this question is _____. Evidence somebody else gathered for their own purposes is _____. Evidence in words rather than numbers, which explains why something is happening, is _____. A finding this business could actually do something about is described as _____.

One cafe, one month

Here is an enquiry run properly on a small problem. A cafe has noticed afternoon trade falling and wants to know what to do. The question is written so a decision could follow from it: what is causing the fall in afternoon trade, and what could we change. Then the evidence that would actually change the decision. Counting customers by hour for a fortnight would show WHEN the fall is, which no opinion can. Asking the customers who still come would show WHY, which no count can. Together they support a recommendation; either alone would not. The counting shows the fall is between two and four, and worst on weekdays, which immediately narrows everything. The asking produces four reasons, and the one that comes up most is that there is nowhere to sit when the two large tables are taken. Now the sorting. The national picture of spending is real and outside their control, so it goes in the background. The new competitor is outside their control but can be planned around, so it shapes the recommendation without being the subject of it. The seating is inside their control, affects the exact hours where trade fell, and was raised unprompted by more than half of those asked. That is where the recommendation comes from. And the last line of the report is the one that makes it usable: add four seats in the window, then count afternoon customers for a fortnight and compare with the figures we already have.

Find the finding they can use

Five findings from an enquiry into a shop with falling sales. Tap the ONE that is most directly actionable by this business.

• Shops of this kind have been closing across the country for several years.
• A larger competitor opened a branch in the next town in the spring.
• Nine of the fifteen customers asked said they had come in and left because nobody was on the till.
• The owner believes people simply prefer shopping online now.
• Town centre footfall has been falling since the bus route changed.

Write the recommendation

A recommendation earns marks when somebody could act on it and check it. Choose the option in each gap.

The enquiry run

Five quick questions on business enquiry. Three lives.

A month, and almost no budget

You are advising a small shop whose sales have fallen over six months. The owner has a month and very little money to spend on finding out why. Work through three decisions.

• Where do you start?
• You can count transactions by hour, or interview a handful of customers. Which do you do?
• Your strongest finding is that footfall in the town has fallen since a bus route changed. What do you do with it?

Plan the enquiry

A small bakery has seen its Saturday takings fall over the last six months. The owner has one month and almost no budget. Plan the enquiry. Do not guess at the answer.

• Write the enquiry question so that a decision could follow from it
• Say what evidence would actually change what the bakery does, and why
• Explain what you would gather in numbers and what in words, and what each would tell you
• Explain how you would sort your findings into what they can act on and what they cannot
• Finish by saying what a usable recommendation would have to contain