Profitability cases
Decompose revenue and cost, then identify the segment and operational cause. Revenue can change through price, volume, mix, market size, or share. Cost can change through input price, productivity, fixed capacity, overhead, or one-time items. The recommendation should address the cause rather than the symptom.
Growth cases
Growth can come from existing customers, new customers, products, geographies, channels, partnerships, acquisitions, or pricing. Evaluate market potential, customer need, advantage, economics, capability, and implementation.
Market-entry cases
Determine market attractiveness, customer segments, competition, right to win, entry mode, investment, financial outcome, and risk. Entry can occur through organic build, acquisition, partnership, licensing, or distribution.
Pricing cases
Assess willingness to pay, customer value, segmentation, competition, cost, channel, and implementation. Pricing affects volume, mix, customer behavior, and brand. A price increase isn't simply additional revenue.
Operations cases
Map process, capacity, utilization, bottlenecks, variability, inventory, quality, service level, and cost. Operations recommendations need practical constraints and implementation sequence.
M&A and investment cases
Evaluate standalone business, market, strategic fit, valuation, synergies, financing, diligence, integration, alternatives, and risk. Accretion or market share alone doesn't establish value creation.
Organization cases
Examine decision rights, structure, spans and layers, incentives, talent, culture, process, and governance. Reorganization should solve a defined performance or coordination problem.
Digital and AI cases
Start with business need, user workflow, data, model or system capability, integration, economics, risk, governance, and adoption. Avoid recommending AI because it is fashionable. Define where automation, prediction, generation, or decision support creates measurable value.
Public-sector and social-impact cases
Define outcome, population, stakeholders, delivery system, budget, equity, feasibility, and implementation. Profit may not be the objective, but resource allocation and measurement still matter.
Case types can combine
A market-entry case can contain pricing and operations. An acquisition can contain organization and technology. Use the client decision rather than the label to determine the structure.
Hybrid cases
A private-equity case can begin as market attractiveness, move into customer retention, require a pricing analysis, and end with an operating plan. A public-sector health case can combine capacity, organization, digital implementation, and equity. The label is only the opening context.
Choosing the first branch by case type
For profitability, begin where the evidence indicates the largest change. For market entry, begin with whether the market and customer need justify further work. For pricing, begin with objective and segment. For operations, begin with process and bottleneck. For M&A, begin with strategic rationale and standalone quality before synergies.
Recommendation differences
A growth case may recommend investment and sequencing. A turnaround case may require immediate liquidity and longer-term restructuring. An organization case may require decision-right changes and transition. The final answer should match the type of action, not use the same generic “pilot and monitor” close.