How to manage a complex Feasibility Analysis?

The success strategy of a company depends on various factors that includes financial management, operations efficiency and clear marketing strategies. Therefore an investor or entrepreneur should work on a very detailed market feasibility study to assess whether the project will be successful or not.

Any feasibility study will contain 3 different sections.

a.) Business Section

b.) Technical Section

c.) Commercial Section

The challenge of a Feasibility study especially if you are assigned something in the manufacturing domain starts with the lack of knowledge of the subject if you don’t have the expertise in-house. Think of a tyre recycling plant or a conveyor belt manufacturing plant. We simply may not have any idea of where to hit the nail. The plot will start to unravel once you have someone tell you about the subject. It starts with listing down the machinery based upon the output desired, the investment and many other factors.

Subject Matter Expertise is a core aspect of any Market Feasibility Study and required all through the study till it is completed. The key areas where Subject Matter Expertise is required are land area required for plant and office, list of machines, selection of machines, process flow chart and manufacturing process. We will also need to understand the cost of output products and inputs to draw up the financial section of the plan.

A detailed feasibility study is areas such as restaurant set-up or a franchise of a fast food restaurant also requires detailed analysis. The market analysis in B2C is a challenge when you do a Feasibility study. Not that it is not important in B2B but here the customer segmentation and targeting is exceptionally important. You may have to do a research based upon the transactions per year, units, foodservice value etc. These data may not be easily available in public domain and sometimes we may need to access paid resources like Euromonitor. A Pre-Feasibility would not require the market data to the depth as explained above but in lesser detail.

Understanding marketing for the products requires a very different paradigm. If I go back to the manufacturing industry example, their target customers may be a Government or private owned coal mine or the railways for that matter. Do you think that putting a social media channel on Facebook is going to solve his marketing challenges. In all probability No! However, for the Fast food chain, facebook can be the most important marketing channel. Therefore,we need to have a very effective marketing plan that is completely suited for the industry. In the case of the fast food chain, the consultants need to know about the POS, HR details, layout design, quality management, regulations and a host of other areas which only an expert who has worked in the industry across different divisions can bring to the table.

I have taken the example of a manufacturing industry and a restaurant but the feasibility study example is applicable to any sector for which the study is being done.  For a service industry like software, e-commerce, Fintech etc. though the business paradigm can be entirely different but the core structure of the plan can follow the pattern as suggested.

Now the key question of how to manage a Feasibility study project? The structuring of the right team is the key to a successful project. The 4 core members of the team should be the senior researcher, the subject matter expert, financial analyst and a Project Manager cum Quality Analyst. The researcher should also take the responsibility of consolidating the document as and when inputs come from the other 2 resources, the financial analyst works on the commercial section and the subject matter expert on the technical section.

The project plan should clearly state the responsibilities of each of the participants and when they should be delivering each of the sections. Every resource should follow the plan and start delivering the work as per the plan. When different parts of the study keep rolling in, the document needs to be constantly checked for quality and consolidated as per the agreed structure. If there is any risk that is being observed, the Project Manager should immediately discuss it with the team and take remedial action.

Finally comes the packaging. The packaging can be done by the researcher who is consolidating the document but if that looks too much of a stretch, a professional designer can do the final design using tools like InDesign. It would make the final product look very professional and create the impression.

I want to add a final point here about the documentation aspect. If the researcher finds that consolidating the document is a stretch and can affect the quality of the document, a professional document specialist can be part of the team. However, to keep a control on the team size, I suggested a team of 4 core members.