The Analyst’s Scalpel: Lancing the Abscess of Systemic Error.

Business Analytics in Action: Or, How to Friend Your Business with Logic and Convince an Investor to Stop Pouring Money Into a Leaky Bucket.

Prologue: The Business Blind Spot. Why Systemic Error Costs More Than Chaos.

For the last 15 years, I’ve been a professional at dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s in business processes. Business analytics is the bedrock of success.

I’m not the kind of guy who will spew a bunch of sophisticated buzzwords just to impress you and sound important.

I’m the guy who looks at your bustling, feverishly active office and sees the very thing you stubbornly ignore: a saga of waste, abuse, and busywork happening right under your nose.

I’m the partner who will warn you about the stain on the back of your suit before you walk out the door for that crucial negotiation.

More accurately, it’s not a stain, but let’s call it a systemic error valued at a few million dollars.

Do you think business analysis is all about snooze-fest charts and overly academic buzzwords? No way!

In my hands, it’s a scalpel of humor that lances the abscess of a problem, and a laser of satire that boils off all the bureaucratic fluff, leaving behind only the healthy, working muscles of your business.

Want a real story? A story about how an entire army of sales reps, led by their managers, came to absolutely despise me, and what happened next.

Get comfortable.

Chapter 1: The Perfect Facade with a Leaky Roof. First Impressions.

In 2013, I was invited to a dairy plant. It was one of the regional leaders in the Far Eastern Federal District (the massive Russian macro-region bordering China, Mongolia, the Koreas, and Japan).

The picture was a tax attorney’s dream: flawless structuring. The manufacturing entity, on a simplified tax system (income minus expenses), quietly processed toll raw materials (materials provided by the client).

The Trading House, on the standard tax system, was the loud, bustling entity that accumulated all the revenue.

Everything was proper, smart, and in full compliance with tax law—a real fairy tale.

But there was a hitch. This beautiful facade hid one simple, terrible fact: the company’s financial bloodstream resembled a sieve.

Profit persistently dipped into the red, the financial gaps grew wider, and the miserable investor, like a seasoned paddler on a leaky boat, could only keep bailing water (read: pouring in new cash) just to stay afloat.

It was a classic example of “rescuing a toxic asset.”

The crisis management for that project is a whole other story, which I described in the article, Crisis Management: Or the Story of How I Looked for EBITDA in the Dairy Rivers of the Far East, But Found It in a Yogurt Nobody Wanted to Make.

Here, however, my task was different: to conduct a sales system audit.

And, unfortunately, I quickly realized I was going to become the enemy of the entire commercial department, as paradoxical as that sounds.

All 54 sales reps, the sales department managers, and the commercial director all hated my guts within a couple of weeks.

And they had compelling reasons for it.

Chapter 2: A War Against Windmills? No, Against Notebooks!

I didn’t sit in the office. I went out into the field.

I drove thousands of miles across the Far Eastern expanse with almost every sales rep and became “that guy” with a notepad.

I observed, listened, and wrote everything down. I sat in on planning meetings where Napoleonic plans were set and saw how the incentive and penalty systems worked.

From the outside, the picture was energizing: everyone was running around, making calls, arguing, printing piles of paperwork, running in and out. Life was bubbling! Work was booming! Revenue was growing!

It seemed like the perfect mechanism. But I saw something else: I saw chaotic hustle, where 90% of the energy was spent running in circles and engaging in busywork.

Why? The answer was right on the surface: a total lack of transparency in business processes. Management saw beautiful reports that had a distant relationship to reality.

I watched a scene play out:

A sales rep sprints into the accounting department with a gas station receipt for $10. And they reimburse his expenses from the petty cash. Every time. “Well, he’s driving all the time!” was the ironclad argument.

Accounts receivable was tracked in a gigantic XLS table, which was compiled from the sales reps’ personal notebooks. The numbers from the notebooks (read: whatever the sales rep decided to write down, or just pull ‘out of thin air’) went into the report.

Control? Routes? Nah, never heard of ‘em. “I can’t come to the office, I’m in my region!” a sales rep calls in. “Great job! Keep up the good work!” the manager praises him. Everyone trusted each other’s ‘dude’s word’ of honor. A stunningly friendly team—a perfect example of team-building.

And this was 2013. Accounting (CRM) and monitoring (GPS tracking) systems had been actively used for a long time.

But here, it was as if they were stuck in the 90s, when the main control tool was a handshake and a promise.

You didn’t need to be a psychic to figure out that this was the perfect atmosphere for abuse to bloom (or explode) at virtually all levels.

The very first spot check of five randomly selected sales reps showed a shortfall. In all five cases.

The amount of the shortfall varied only by the scale of the rep’s audacity and their sense of impunity—the two main performance-enhancers for shady employees.

Chapter 3: Technology vs. the ‘Notebook Mentality.’ The First Small Win.

The solution was logical, simple, and elegant. Implement a tracking system and make CRM reporting mandatory.

Imagine the panic on deck! Suddenly, it was impossible to lie about miles driven (“Hey, Bob, why were you parked by the lake for three hours?”).

It was impossible to tack on extra store visits. It was impossible to hide the actual volumes of shipments and returns at a specific store (perishables are a pain, but they can be manipulated).

The chaotic hustle magically subsided. The efficiency of honest employees increased. But the main problem—accounts receivable collection—remained.

And this was a real battle! Retail outlets in the sticks were the realm of cash and double-bookkeeping.

Shop owners preferred to buy goods from suppliers who didn’t require official wire transfers.

Sales reps, in a rush to hit sales targets, went along with this, and their managers, of course, encouraged it.

Well, how else could they hit the targets?

The attempt to introduce numbered cash receipts for internal use failed miserably. They were “lost,” “forgotten,” or “spilled tea on.” Pure sabotage.

Chapter 4: A Feast in the Midst of the Plague. Or, How Social Media Handed Us the Solution.

And what was bound to happen, happened. One of the “heroes” became so intertwined with the company’s money that he started to consider it his own.

In a state of altered consciousness induced by hard liquor, he drove to his retail points, collected all the accounts receivable under the pretense that “the company urgently needs the cash,” and went off to party, generously sharing photo and video updates on a popular social network and racking up “likes.”

This was the moment of truth. A full-scale, top-to-bottom audit of every sales rep’s activities was initiated, with visits to stores and accounts receivable reconciliation.

It was resource-intensive and slow, but “fun”: 80% of the sales reps suddenly started getting “sick,” and some even had relatives die in remote regions of our massive country.

It turned out the “shortfall” amounted to a few million dollars.

More accurately, it wasn’t a “shortfall,” but plain-old theft.

For example, a scheme was uncovered where sales reps with an entrepreneurial streak would take expired milk (sometimes 100-150 liters a day, or more) from their assigned stores and take it to an underground workshop. For a small bribe, they would turn this milk into cottage cheese.

They would then deliver this cheese surrogate to the same stores, where the cheese was sold as ‘homemade’ (without labeling, documents, etc.).

Gas expenses covered by the company, raw materials covered by the company, and they even got a paycheck! An ideal business model with fantastic financial metrics!

The investor and I visited this underground ‘homemade’ cottage cheese facility.

Without getting into the sanitary conditions or the migration law violations at this workshop, you can imagine the face of one of the sales reps who drove up at that exact moment with another batch of expired milk.

Coming face-to-face with his boss, the sales rep put on a performance worthy of an NYU or UCLA theater grad.

It was impossible not to smile at his impromptu show. We weren’t just smiling; we were openly roaring with laughter.

In all this mess, the company’s Security Service, led by a “real Colonel” from a highly respected law enforcement agency (retired, of course), deserves special mention.

It turned out the security officers’ work consisted of “educational chats” as a preventative measure: “Behave yourself, son! You know where I used to work? Watch your back!” A stern stare and furrowed brow were the constant props.

Apparently, this was considered a cutting-edge audit method. And the main risk control tool, judging by the strong ambiance emanating from the Security Service office, was clearly not coffee.

The result: 38 sales reps and all Sales Team leads were fired. We decided to let it go quietly without pressing criminal charges.

Epilogue: The Small Victory of a Big Analyst. Or, What I Really Offer.

It was a victory. Not mine—my client’s. A victory over his own fears and a recognition of his mistakes.

He finally saw the light and uttered the sacred phrase: “Better is less, but better quality.”

Tough but necessary decisions were made:

1. Complete abandonment of cooperation with small retail stores that insisted on cash-only transactions and refused to process wire payment.
2. All advertising campaigns were shut down. The priority shifted to in-store promo events (tastings).
3. All remaining efforts were directed towards working with major retail chains, where processes are transparent and predictable.
4. Focus on product quality and the new product line.
5. Dividing the territory into zones and optimizing store visits based on economically justified routes.

And guess what? After a few months, that same “stubborn” traditional retail started to come back on its own.

Because quality is the best argument. And without any mumbo-jumbo, they started paying via wire transfer.

So, what exactly was my job as a business analyst in this project?

I didn’t just show up and say, “You’re being robbed, fire everyone!” I came in and helped localize a systemic failure.

I didn’t just find a hole in the fence; I explained why it appeared, how money was leaking through it, and how to build a new, strong fence with surveillance cameras and a security checkpoint.

My job is to stop the chaos and restore order. Not to scare the staff, but to build business processes that make any attempt at abuse meaningless.

To turn chaos into a system, and intuitive decisions into management KPIs.

So, who am I, and why should you talk to me?

If reading this story didn’t just make you smile, but also made you think and recognize echoes of problems in your own business, let’s get acquainted.

I am a professional business analyst.

I’m a practitioner. My approach is based not on dry theory or having a degree, but on 15 years of real sailing experience in the rough waters of business.

I’m 49 years old, and I’ve seen a lot. I’ve been with my clients not only during “downward spirals” but also during hostile takeovers and corporate conflicts.

And we always surfaced, undefeated and thus even stronger.

This doesn’t make me a cynic—it gives me the ability to see the essence of the problem through a thick layer of corporate tinsel.

My tools aren’t just Excel and PowerPoint. They are:

• In-Depth Audits and Process Review. I don’t take reports at face value. I trust data that I can verify personally. I identify not just what is happening, but why it’s happening.
• Systemic Thinking. I see the business as a single organism. A sales problem might be rooted in logistics, and a cash-flow problem might be due to incorrect motivation in the purchasing department. I find those connections.
• Implementation of Practical Solutions. I don’t propose building an “ideal” system for $10 million over the course of one year. I offer targeted, effective, and, importantly, implementable solutions that deliver results here and now. CRM, tracking, and electronic document management are just a few of the tools. No one is surprised by them now, but problems in business processes still remain. Why? Because every specific case is unique and requires truly individual study.
• Communication and Change Management. I understand that any change is met with resistance. I know how to communicate the benefits of changes not just to the owner but also to the employees, turning them from saboteurs into allies.
• Focus on Security and Transparency. I implement solutions into systems that make theft and abuse not impossible, but maximally difficult and economically unprofitable.
• Strategic Vision. I help not just patch holes, but build a development strategy based on real, not promotional, data. Sometimes you need to take a step back (abandon unprofitable directions) to take 2-3 steps forward.

This story with the dairy plant isn’t the only one on my track record. It’s just a vivid example. Any successful business analyst has dozens of such “dairy plants” in their practice.

If you feel there is too much hustle in your business, and profits leave a lot to be desired, if you suspect that the beautiful, perfect reports on your desk hide an imperfect reality, if you’re tired of being a “paddler on a leaky boat”—let’s meet.

Let me buy you a cup of coffee. We won’t talk about problems, but about opportunities. About how to make your business not just successful, but also transparent, manageable, and stable.

And who knows, perhaps the next interesting and insightful story about the triumph over absurdity is one we’ll write together.

And we’ll shake hands. As partners.

Sincerely Yours,

Business Pathfinder

P.S. And that’s the end of this story. I hope it left you with a positive impression. Your reaction in the form of a “like” or comment is very important to me. If you wish to materially support the author, a tip of any amount will be a sign of your approval and appreciation for my work. I am grateful for your time.