CRUZ's analysis was developed with the objective of facilitating managerial decision-making when it comes to business-related variables or policy decisions when it comes to economic variables. This type of analysis aims to provide information for the decision maker about the impact of a selected event on the behavior of the growth rate of a variable of interest disaggregated on previously defined observations.
The starting point of the CRUZ analysis is to focus on an event that a priori is estimated to have a significant impact on a previously identified variable. Such an event should express its influence on the growth rate of the interest variable. These rates are the raw material for the CRUZ analysis. This analysis focuses on a graph called a CROSS graph whose construction and application is broken down below.
1.- CRUZ graph
Because the growth rates can present both positive and negative values, they are located on the CRUZ graph that consists of four quadrants. Observations whose growth rate have taken positive values both before and after the event are located in the first quadrant. In quadrant two, the observations whose growth rate were positive in the pre-event period and negative in the post-event period fall. In quadrant three, the observations whose growth rates were negative both before and after the selected event are positioned. Finally, in the fourth quadrant, the observations that presented negative growth rates in the pre-event stage and positive growth rates in the post-event stage are located.
1.1 Quadrant by Quadrant Analysis
The selected event must have differentiated impacts on the growth rates of the variable, as a result, the observations will be positioned in one of the four quadrants. An observation located in quadrant 1 means that the observation already presented a positive growth rate before the event and after the event the observation continued to present a positive growth rate, therefore it can be affirmed that the impact of the event on the elements of this quadrant It might have been light. In quadrant two are positioned the growth rates of the variable that had a positive rate before the event and a negative rate after the event, hence the comment that the event had a negative impact on the behavior associated with the growth rate of the reference observation.In quadrant three, the observations that both pre- and post-event had a negative growth rate are located, this means that the event had no influence on the behavior of the growth rate corresponding to the observation of interest. Finally, in quadrant four, the observations that before the event had a negative growth rate and post-event a positive one are positioned. This means that the event of interest substantially modified the behavior of the observations.Finally, in quadrant four, the observations that before the event had a negative growth rate and post-event a positive one are positioned. This means that the event of interest substantially modified the behavior of the observations.Finally, in quadrant four, the observations that before the event had a negative growth rate and post-event a positive one are positioned. This means that the event of interest substantially modified the behavior of the observations.
Given the importance of events for decision-making, the CRUZ analysis is relevant when drawing conclusions from the analysis. Thus, the observations that are located in quadrant number four are those that made the most of the event. While the observations located in quadrant number three started from having a poor performance and it is said that the event had no impact on that use. Finally, the observations in quadrant number two had a negative influence on the given event since they came from a positive performance, it will be necessary to investigate what happened with those observations. From the observations located in quadrant four, it is concluded that the event was able to reinforce the performance they had been showing.
2. Example of CROSS analysis
This section exemplifies the CRUZ analysis. The situation presented is an administrative type application within the company: the selected event is training for the sales force, which is made up of 20 salespeople. The key variable is the sales levels that each one reports on a weekly basis. The pre-event period is a fortnight (two weeks) before the training course, the post-event period is a fortnight after the training. Growth rates are calculated and plotted on a scatter diagram and from there you can see the quadrant in which sellers fall according to their sales results.
Practical exercise in Excel
