You take over marketing for a reporting service used by small retail chains. At the first meeting, the marketer shows rising conversions, the sales lead reports fewer payments, and the owner asks to double annual revenue. The team proposes changing advertising channels, buying a new system and letting AI publish offers. Funding has not been approved for all three.
Your assignment is a plan the team can act on and use to make its next decision. The circumstances and numbers are illustrative. We reuse the service economics from an earlier example, then add a separate following period for diagnosis. No access to an ad account is required.
The brief: two reports count different things
A client pays 60,000 ₸ for a monthly package. Preparing the report and supporting that company cost 20,000 ₸. In the first closed month, 20 companies received and paid for the service: ten new clients and ten existing ones. Advertising cost 200,000 ₸; other fixed expenses were 400,000 ₸.
Suppose the following closed month contains 18 fulfilled and paid packages: eight new companies and ten existing ones. Price, variable cost per package, advertising and fixed expenses are unchanged. There are no refunds or discounts in this calculation; amounts exclude indirect taxes and the result is before income tax.
The advertising summary contains 30 form submissions and 20 payments in the first month, then 50 submissions and 18 payments in the second. These events were added together and labelled conversions, producing totals of 50 and 68. Finance has reconciled the payment records, but some acquisition sources are still missing. Complete lead-to-purchase observation windows have not been aligned across channels.
With its current team, the service can support up to 22 companies a month. That is a case assumption which an operations lead would need to confirm in a real project. Payment dates for additional work, available cash and annual revenue remain unknown.
Prepare your decision before reading the analysis
Write one or two pages for the owner. Begin with what happened to revenue and the monthly result. Then propose the first checks: who reconciles which records, what they deliver to the team, and which decision that evidence enables.
Include the next test's budget, delivery constraints and one AI process. Give each stage a condition for proceeding and a reason to stop. Leave missing data as questions for the people responsible.
Separately assess an additional 120,000 ₸ of advertising. How many additional paid and fulfilled monthly packages would cover it? Would six extra companies fit within current capacity? Future renewals cannot be treated as confirmed.
This is a written self-assessment. The site does not grade your document or award a CMO qualification. The short quiz reinforces individual principles; the plan's quality rests on its calculations, assumptions and actions.
Analysis: separate measurement from business performance
The summary's increase comes from adding two different events. One client may submit a form and later pay, so the sum is not a count of buyers. Moving from 50 to 68 is a 36% increase, but labelling it sales growth would be incorrect. There were two fewer paid and fulfilled packages.
For this case, the financial register confirms the volume of delivered service. The advertising summary exposes a definition mismatch, while its allocation of events to sources still needs reconciliation. Switching off a channel because the totals disagree would get ahead of the diagnosis.
Assign the work. The marketer describes the events and summary rules, the analyst links authorised records, the sales lead clarifies lead progression, and finance confirms payments and costs. The operations lead confirms service delivery. Everyone works with the same period, meaningful identifiers and agreed statuses.
Digital analytics checks distinguish the business operation, its recorded event and its appearance in a report. If an operation happened but the event was lost, the problem concerns measurement. If the customer could not pay, another investigation is needed. Here, the decline in fulfilled and paid packages is confirmed; its cause remains open.
Calculate both monthly results
Each package contributes 60,000 - 20,000 = 40,000 ₸ after variable delivery costs. That contribution covers advertising, fixed expenses and the company's remaining result. In a P&L calculation, each expense belongs on one line: the marketer's salary is already within the fixed 400,000 ₸ and is not deducted again.
| Metric | First month | Following month |
|---|---|---|
| Fulfilled and paid packages | 20 | 18 |
| Revenue | 1,200,000 ₸ | 1,080,000 ₸ |
| Variable delivery costs | 400,000 ₸ | 360,000 ₸ |
| Contribution before advertising and fixed expenses | 800,000 ₸ | 720,000 ₸ |
| Advertising | 200,000 ₸ | 200,000 ₸ |
| Other fixed expenses | 400,000 ₸ | 400,000 ₸ |
| Result before income tax | 200,000 ₸ | 120,000 ₸ |
Revenue fell by 120,000 ₸, or 10%. The remaining result fell by 80,000 ₸, or 40%: with fixed expenses unchanged, the company lost the contribution of two packages. This accounts for the financial movement without establishing why client numbers declined.
An extra 120,000 ₸ of advertising requires three additional packages: 3 × 40,000 = 120,000 ₸. That covers only the extra advertising from first-month contribution, excluding new launch or team overhead costs. Three purchases credited to advertising still need to be distinguished from three purchases caused by it.
With 18 current clients, four places remain. Six additional companies would make 24, two above capacity. Any change in delivery cost belongs in the unit economics before extra volume is promised. Matching income and expenses for a period also leaves open whether cash will last until payment arrives.
Sequence the 90 days around conditions for proceeding
| Period | Work and owner | Evidence needed to proceed |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1-15 | The analyst and finance reconcile operations; sales and delivery identify losses and constraints | Shared definitions, an agreed calculation and discrepancies assigned to owners |
| Days 16-45 | The problem owner implements a repair; the marketer trials one AI process | A repeated check confirms the repair, and process evaluation includes quality and complete costs |
| Days 46-90 | Marketing and finance run a justified growth test | Mature data, an uncertainty assessment and a decision reflecting cash and capacity |
The periods illustrate a sequence. By day 46, new leads might still be within the agreed purchase window. The report would then describe incomplete observation, with the budget increase still undecided. Work on independent problems can proceed in parallel.
Each identified loss needs a check after its repair. Suppose some accepted leads were never assigned to a manager. New lead journeys and the assignment log can confirm that the routing problem is fixed. Future sales cannot be booked as results at the moment of repair.
The owner receives three distinct updates: what is confirmed, what has been fixed and what remains under investigation. A new system becomes justified when the current constraint is established and its removal has a clear cost. A platform name cannot supply that justification.
Bound the AI assignment
A suitable pilot is drafting an offer from an approved service reference. Its inputs contain current terms, permitted wording and missing information. The model prepares material for an editor; it receives no authority to change prices or budgets, or publish the offer.
The editor checks each promise against the source reference. Changed copy needs approval for that new version. A named person can stop publication and return preparation to the previous process.
The cost of a finished AI-assisted result includes preparing inputs, every attempt, review, corrections and maintenance. Compare work of equal quality, recording tool invoices separately from staff-time valuations. A released hour is time for another task, not cash in the bank.
Defend the conclusion and apply it to your project
A strong response connects the problem with a check and an owner. The calculation shows the monthly result falling to 120,000 ₸; the plan identifies what must be known before the next expense. Doubling annual revenue remains a target. A long-term strategy needs an annual baseline, seasonality, renewals, demand and delivery resources. Two months cannot replace those inputs.
Prepare the same memo for your project. One confirmed problem, a calculation of its financial scale and the next check are enough. Name the source of every input, missing information, the person responsible and the document supporting the decision. Without a working project, use the case above and keep its assumptions explicit.
The deliverable is a memo a colleague can recalculate and execute. “Improve marketing” still lacks an area of work and a completion criterion. If a budget depends on future renewals, show them as a separate scenario with supporting grounds.
For a final check, change one premise: both months contain 20 fulfilled and paid packages, while only recorded payment events decline. With every other condition unchanged, both monthly results are 200,000 ₸. Restoring measurement and reconciling the missing operations become the first assignment. A plan to rescue falling sales no longer fits, while the need to check the data and assign an owner remains.