The importance of analysis and analytical skills to the manager making Essay

The importance of analysis and analytical skills to the manager making decisions in business - Essay Example From this research it is clear that the importance of analysis and analytical skills to the manager making decisions in a business cannot be refuted. This is more so in today’s rapidly changing business environment and the availability of â€Å"too much† information due to the convergence of information technology, media and telecommunications. As is in life or any other important event in our lives, before embarking on a project planning is the first thing that managers have to do. As the clichà © goes, failure to plan is planning to fail. Planning involves a series of decisions that may range from operational to strategic. Project planning is a subset of operational planning whose core aim is to come up with a document referred to as a project plan. Within the project plan, managers and other stakeholders who were involved in the planning process define the objectives of the project, its scope, how the project will be conducted, the time allocated, cost estimates and roles and responsibilities of all the personnel who will be involved. Project planning involves four main steps that can be subdivided into additional steps depending on the task at hand. These steps are: establishing project goals, setting project deliverables, agreeing on project schedule and ensuring that there are support plans in place. The advantages of project planning are derived from each of these steps. In step one, stakeholders are identified, there needs outlined and project goals are set prioritizing the stakeholder needs. The advantage of this is that the outcomes are SMART goals which imply that it will be easy to detect whether the project is advancing, stagnant or regressing. Step two specifies the items to be delivered, how they are to be delivered and when they should be delivered. This advantage of this stage is that it sets up the key parameters that can be optimised using software tools to design the most effective and efficient project schedule. With a pletho ra of project management software currently in the market managers can easily identify critical path. Step two and three enable managers to balance the â€Å"tetrad trade-off† of: product scope, quality grade, time-to-produce and cost-to-complete. The final step of setting up support plans involves establishing risk management plans, communications plans and HR plans. The advantages here are numerous such as: having contingencies in place in case of anything, ensuring information goes to the right people during project implementation and using HR allocation to aid in establishing the project budget. There are also disadvantages to project planning such as: (1) at times it may take too long to come up with a plan – as rival companies catch up; (2) at times the planning committee may get lose sight of the purpose of the planning as they get bogged down in unnecessary detailing; and (3) it may lower implementation flexibility – which is dangerous in a rapidly chang ing environment – since personnel will may feel restricted by the options availed in the plan. 2.0. Financial modelling Investopedia (2011) defines financial modelling