You have already identified a Business Challenge. Here, you build on your selected challenge to clarify the business outcome you wish to achieve and determine which analytic question you will pursue to enable your organization to choose a path forward. Using the template on the following slide, complete the following steps.

QUESTION

You have already identified a Business Challenge. Here, you build on your selected challenge to clarify the business outcome you wish to achieve and determine which analytic question you will pursue to enable your organization to choose a path forward. Using the template on the following slide, complete the following steps.

1.Copy Your Business Challenge: Start from your assignment in the Orientation module. Summarize the business challenge you identified there. You may choose to update or reword your challenge.

2.Identify Your Business Outcome: To frame your analysis going forward, you’ll need to focus on a concrete business outcome to improve. Identify the core metric at the root of your business challenge. Then, state your goal for changing that metric. If relevant to your situation, identify a target threshold you seek to achieve.

NOTE: When stating your business outcome, be as precise as possible. Your Personal Case Project should advance high-level business outcomes that senior leaders care about (Ex: growing revenue, reducing costs, or improving quality). The way you support these high-level outcomes is by improving some supporting business outcome that is within your scope to influence (Ex: reducing the cost to acquire customers, improving deals closed per commission dollar). What supporting business outcome do you wish to improve? The more precise you can be, the simpler the analysis you’ll require as you move forward will be.

3.Define Your Analysis Objective:  During Orientation, you considered multiple questions that might be relevant to your challenge. Now, with your business outcome in mind, it’s time to narrow down to one. Successful analysis objectives satisfy these criteria:

üAnswering the question will help you recommend which path your organization should take to resolve your Business Challenge.

üYour question should be driven by some sort of suspicion or hunch that your business has not explored before. This suspicion might be related to:

• A potential cause of your business challenge (e.g. “We’re sending too many marketing emails.”)
• A previously unexplored factor (or factors) that might be influencing your core metric (e.g. “Older customers may be more receptive to our marketing efforts.”)
• A potential solution you suspect might impact your business outcome (e.g. “Including more substantive content in our emails will improve their effectiveness.”)

üYour question requires a quantified answer.

üYour question is narrowly scoped. This program urges you to adopt a lean results-oriented approach towards analytics. What is the simplest analytic question you can define that, when answered, will allow you to create impact?

• While such focus is good practice in general, it’s particularly important in your Personal Case Project given the time constraints you will face in this program.
• In particular, you may face multiple paths forward to consider (e.g., “Which of all of our marketing channels is the most efficient?”). If so, consider focusing on the one that is most critical for your organization to better understand (Ex: quantify only the impact of search advertising versus all marketing channels).

ANSWER

Analyzing Customer Acquisition Cost to Improve Revenue Growth

Business Challenge

The business challenge identified is the high customer acquisition cost (CAC) experienced by the organization. This challenge was highlighted during the Orientation module, emphasizing the need to address the rising costs associated with acquiring new customers.

Business Outcome

The core metric at the root of the business challenge is the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). The goal is to reduce the CAC by optimizing the efficiency of customer acquisition processes. By doing so, the organization aims to improve its revenue growth and profitability. The target threshold for CAC reduction will be a 20% decrease from the current average CAC.

Analysis Objective

The analysis objective is to identify key factors contributing to the high CAC and propose actionable strategies to optimize customer acquisition processes. Specifically, the analysis will focus on answering the following question:

What are the primary drivers of high customer acquisition costs, and how can they be effectively mitigated to achieve the target threshold of 20% reduction in CAC?

By addressing this question, the organization can gain insights into the specific areas where improvements can be made to optimize customer acquisition, reduce costs, and enhance revenue growth.