Does your conclusion still have to be action oriented (+ 3 prong justification, risks and next steps) when you have not reached a conclusion in the case, i.e. you ran out of time and still did not prove your hypothesis?

Hi Thierry,

yes, you should still keep an action oriented conclusion; quoting a previous answer, the structure could be the following:

1. Repeat the objective: “Dear Mr CEO, you asked us to find why profits are going down and a way to increase them by $5M in 2 years” – This allows you to be 100% sure you are fully answering the case. More than 50% of the people don’t do this, so you will be already above average with this step
2. Provide an answer-first conclusion: “With the information we have so far we can conclude that the main reason for the profit decline is increasing labour cost abroad. We also found a way to increase profits by $3.5M. This is coming from two sources: (i) relocating part of the production in Mexico and (ii) starting our own website.” If there are only two areas you found to increase profits, you have to mention two. Of course, if you found a third one, would be good to add it.
3. Provide next steps – including risks: “We haven't fully covered the monetary objective and considered the risks involved. As additional steps, we would propose the following: (i) There may be some issues with the relocation in Mexico due to potential layoffs in the US which would be worth to be investigated. (ii) We would be happy to continue the analysis to identify additional $1.5M in profits. To do so, as we saw it could make sense to investigate the launch of a new product in the market. We would like to provide a full analysis on this in a couple of days”

Best,

Francesco

Hi,

You'll face this situation in 90% of the cases. Basically, consultants are testing you on 2 things:

1. How comfortable you are in providing some recommendation based on limited data
2. Are you making a mistake, showing too much confidence in the solution that is not properly backed up by data

Here is how you can mitigate this:

1. State what was the problem
2. Then say something like: Based on the limited data we have, my recommendation is the following...
3. And here are the 3 reasons why... A...B...C...
4. To be 100% sure in this recommendation, additionally, I would like to check the following...

In the last bullet, you simply provide a list of what else you need to check to be comfortable with the solution

Good luck!