Piyanka Jain, the founder of Aryng—a management consulting firm focused on analytics, wrote an article for Forbes about her three-step solution for your biggest business challenge of 2019. This approach can help organizations deal with business growth challenges or opportunities that can be solved using data and analytics in the new year.

The 3 Steps

• Step 1: Involve the key stakeholders to formulate an aligned problem definition.
• Step 2: Understand business constraints and the current state/processes.
• Step 3: Create an aligned solution with key stakeholders and an analytics SME.

Step 1

When addressing an issue, start with an assessment of the problem. You can’t develop a solution without a thorough understanding of the problem you’re trying to tackle. Get key stakeholders involved by interviewing them about risks, needs, etc. to help you get a better idea of what your solution needs to address. Different stakeholders will view the problem in different ways. You will need to address all stakeholder viewpoints and then come up with a way to align all stakeholders on a common vision of the problem. This will help you come up with the most effective solution.

Step 2

In addition to understanding the problem, you also need to understand the potential constraints you may face when building a solution. It’s important to know your boundaries. There may be limitations when it comes to resources, time, engineering, etc., so you’ll need to come up with a solution that fits all of your constraints.

Step 3

Once you have a thorough understanding of the problem, the current process, and business constraints, you can begin developing a solution. You may need to call in subject matter experts (SMEs) to assist you during this time. After all, you can’t be expected to be an expert in all areas yourself. It may be in your best interest to come up with several possible solutions, discuss them with your stakeholders, and then finalize the best overall solution.

If you have a business problem at hand, try this process to help you come up with a viable solution. For more information and an example of Piyanka used these steps, check out the Forbes article attached below.