Approaches

Oxford Analytica’s Consultancy Practice offers analysis tailored to each client’s individual needs. We employ a range of approaches depending on the nature of the challenge.

Approaches our consultants employ include:

Trend Analysis

Investors and companies that are able to identify early trends and exploit the opportunities they generate will be one-step ahead of their competitors and other market participants.. Governments and institutions that incorporate an understanding of long-term trends into their policy-making and planning will better serve their citizens and prepare their societies to meet future challenges.

We assist organisations in identifying future trends (demographic, social, environmental, technological, political, etc) and assessing how they are likely to shape the future needs of consumers and society, the development of new technologies, the availability of key inputs, the expectations of society, and the design of regulation.

Scenario Planning

Scenario planning is a powerful analytical tool which allows investors, strategists and planners to develop long-term strategies that are resilient and robust even under conditions of uncertainty. By extending decisionmakers’ time horizons it ensures that organisations are equipped to handle rapid and dramatic change. Our scenarios integrate the views of experts from across a wide range of disciplines and consider the interaction between political, economic, social, business, environmental, technological, and scientific issues.

We have extensive experience in applying scenarios as a means of evaluating and developing strategies, analysing the long-term prospects for new markets, assessing investment portfolios, identifying threats, and generally improving organisational preparedness.

Stakeholder Analysis

As the influence of media and civil society has grown, stakeholders have more power to affect a company or institution’s ability to meet its objectives, implement strategies, or even to sustain its business model. Stakeholder relations are no longer peripheral to an organisation’s success but have become part of the strategic environment.

We apply stakeholder analysis to assist organisations in managing critical issues, developing political and regulatory strategies, building support networks, and engaging with policymakers and other stakeholders.

Early Warning Systems

Our Early Warning Systems leverage our global network of experts to provide intensive monitoring and analysis of issues, countries or regions. By constantly tracking and interpreting developments we assist our clients in identifying new and emerging threats. Where appropriate, this is undertaken using our Stress Point framework.

Through tailoring our services to each an organisation’s interests and activities we ensure that our monitoring activities generate relevant and actionable information, and provide clients with a firm basis for decision-making.

Index Construction

Indices are an effective tool to:

summarise complex information;
rank performance based on selected indicators; and
make indirect policy recommendations.