Java Judy's Financial Performance

Purpose:

to quantify Java Judy's revenues and expenses month-by-month since the business was founded in order to determine the firm's profitability

Input:

financial statements, tax returns, daily/weekly/monthly sales reports, general profit and loss statements from the accounting department of Java Judy's

Elements:

• Data Requirements. What data is necessary?
• Availability of data already. What is already available; what further information can be provided by Judy herself and by the accounting department?
• Gap Analysis. Where are the gaps? What additional work and collection of data is necessary?
• Data Request. What is the form, document, or interview that will be submitted to the accounting department in order to obtain the necessary and missing data?
• Data Synthesis. How will we pull together all of the information in order to summarize month-by-month profitability?

Techniques:

To accomplish this task, we might draw from a number of techniques, including brainstorming, data dictionary and glossary, data flow diagrams, document analysis, and interviews. All of these might point to sources of increased expenses in the business today.

Stakeholders:

Stakeholders include the business analyst, the customer, Judy herself, the accounting department, and the company's external bankers and investors who are interested in the overall performance.

Output:

Our output was a month-by-month breakdown of the company's revenues, expenses, and resulting profit, which can serve as a starting point (or an input) for further analyses as we continue to work through the problem at hand.

Identify three tasks that will help the business analyst work toward a solution that will provide profitability information:

• One short-term (<1 hour)
• One medium-term (1-4 weeks)
• One long-term (1-6 months).