"Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training."
-Anna Freud		     Needs Analysis   

A. The "table"

The Needs Analysis process applies to the customer, the organization and the market. Its purpose is to focus on the key issues facing the organization.

The graphic format provides an easily understandable picture of the most important areas to address, based on how they impact the various needs. The data is determined through the use of "focus groups" or by analyzing the data already existing in the organization. This eliminates the need for costly unproductive customer surveys.

  The table consists of:

  • The requirements (customer, organization or market)

  • The macro business processes ( see macro business process)

  • A relative weight for each requirement based on both the customer and the organization

  • A "market delight" weight to emphasize those areas where management wants to excel.

  • A correlation analysis of how each of the key business processes affect each requirement

B. Results and benefits

The result is a graphical display of the requirements and their importance and the relation to the business process. In a simple form it helps to:

C. The process

The needs analysis process is developed as follows:

  • Identify "who" is the customer and their segments
  • Define sample requirements
  • The organization identifies, through focus groups or analysis of internal data, what is important to the customers in the following categories:
    • cost of the product or service
    • expected quality willing to pay for
    • expected delivery terms of the product or service
    • the safety of the product or service
    • what is expected of the corporation in the socially responsible area
  • All customer responses or data analyzed is categorized into the above groups and the main requirements are defined in "plain English" language.
  • The organization determines the gap between what is expected by the customer and the level of service they receive now. This will determine the level of "satisfaction" with the specific attributes.
    • to avoid large and time consuming surveys this is done internally by upper management
  • Management assigns a market weight to each element identified. This weight measures management's desires to be positioned in certain key areas.

D. Assigning priority

  • The principle behind the CNA approach is
    • the priority should only be applied to those customer requisites that are very important and have low level of satisfaction
    • the organization can only work in few goals at a time

 

 IMPORTANCE.gif (4879 bytes)

E. How to assign weights to customer requirement

FACTOR DESCRIPTION WEIGHT SCALE
IMPORTANCE
(to customer)		 The degree of importance that your customers place on a given requirement importancescale.gif (1884 bytes)
CURRENT LEVEL OF SATISFACTION
(customer's)		 The degree of satisfaction customers are experiencing on that specific requirement scalesatisfactionpresent.gif (987 bytes)
DESIRED LEVEL OF SATISFACTION
(customer's/company's)		 The degree of satisfaction that either the customer or the company determines is needed to maintain a competitive advantage scalesatisfactiondesired.gif (1103 bytes)
MARKET ACCENT
(management's)		 Management's emphasis on selected customer requirements, usually high in importance, to gain additional competitive advantage. No accent....................1.0
Medium accent...........1.2
High accent.................1.5