Businesses inevitably face challenges. Whether it’s declining profits, high employee turnover, or rising production costs, some problems are too important to ignore. But how can you know what exactly is causing a problem? To determine this, you might want to perform a root cause analysis.
Learn about root cause analysis, discover how you can conduct one to identify the underlying issues impacting your company, and gain access to a template to get you started.
What is a root cause analysis?
A root cause analysis (RCA) is a problem-solving process designed to help you identify root causes creating issues for your business. Ecommerce merchants can perform root cause analyses to methodically evaluate their business processes, systems, and practices with the goal of determining what underlying issues are spurring negative outcomes like low employee retention rates or declining customer satisfaction scores. Although merchants often use root cause analysis to identify the source of problems, you can also use it to help you understand the source of positive results, allowing you to replicate success.
Core principles of root cause analysis
There are a few key guidelines to keep in mind when creating your own root cause analysis report, including:
- Avoid placing blame. When performing root cause analyses, focus on the larger picture rather than who was responsible for the issue: Think about why and how the problem was able to occur instead of who made the mistake.
- Encourage open communication. To gain a clear understanding of all the possible causal factors contributing to a problem, you’ll need input from various departments and team members who—together—can give you a comprehensive view of your company’s operations.
- Prioritize concrete evidence. As you examine the possible causes of an issue, focus on data such as key performance indicators, which provide clear metrics.
- Consider multiple root causes. Although a problem might stem from a singular root cause, sometimes an issue arises from a complicated combination of interconnected causes that you’ll then need to address in a variety of ways.
- Focus on corrective actions. Although the root cause analysis process involves a significant focus on problems, remember to always consider problems within the constructive framework of finding a solution.
How to conduct a root cause analysis
- Define your problem
- Brainstorm potential causal factors
- Organize causal factors
- Determine your root causes
- Test out solutions
Here are some basic steps you can follow when conducting a root cause analysis for your own business.
1. Define your problem
Every RCA process requires a clearly defined problem. Start by identifying your problem, then write a problem statement that describes the issue at hand. A clear problem statement helps your team understand the issue and its significance.
For example, imagine you discover an increase in shopping cart abandonment on your ecommerce website. Compared to last month, cart abandonment is up 4%.
2. Brainstorm potential causal factors
Identify causal factors that may be contributing to your problem. Sit down with your team and gather different perspectives on what might be causing the issue. There are a few main types of causal and contributing factors you’ll need to consider:
- Physical causes. These causal factors involve materials and equipment failures like broken production machines or a website malfunction.
- Human causes. Human causes stem from human error like incorrect data entry or miscommunications.
- Organizational causes. Organizational causal factors include mishaps within systems and protocols, like glitchy software systems or repetitive procedures.
3. Organize causal factors
Once you’ve compiled a list of potential causal factors, organize them using root cause analysis tools like:
- Five Whys: This involves continually asking “why?” until arriving at the root of an issue.
- Pareto analysis: This allows you to estimate which causes have the most impact).
- Fishbone diagram: This organizes all contributing causes into categories.
To use the fishbone diagram, first write your primary problem on the right (where the head of the fish would be). Draw a horizontal line to the left, then sketch branches that extend above and below the line. Each branch designates a category of potential causes. In a traditional fishbone diagram, there are six branches—people, process, equipment, materials, environment, and measurement. However, you can customize your diagram by creating your own category branches.
For example, if your main problem is increased cart abandonment, you might create branches on your fishbone diagram for categories like checkout process, security, product, and website functionality. Once you’ve created your branches, fill them in with the causal factors that fall under the corresponding category. For example, limited payment options, last-minute shipping costs, and unnecessary form fields fall under the checkout process branch, while a causal factor like slow loading times falls under website functionality.
Use a free fishbone root cause analysis template to jump-start your process.
4. Determine your root causes
To perform effective root cause analysis, you’ll need to source empirical evidence on which causal factors are contributing to your specific symptoms. Collect data on each causal factor. Avoid assumptions about which causal factors seem the most important, and instead, dig deeper to identify the root cause of your problem based on data.
For example, you might notice that a majority of your shopping cart abandonments occur during a slow loading period for your website, suggesting website speed is a primary causal factor. You determine server performance issues have reduced your page speed score significantly, and your load time for checkout pages specifically is more than two seconds.
5. Test out solutions
After analyzing your causal factors, you can start to implement solutions. For example, now that you’ve discovered your shopping cart abandonment rate increased because of slow loading times, you might decide to try out a more reliable ecommerce platform. Keep in mind that complex problems might have multiple root causes, and you may need to try more than one solution.
Once you’ve implemented a solution, monitor the results with KPIs to determine if your fix is working and decide whether or not you need to try a different solution.
Example of root cause analysis
Imagine you notice declining website traffic on your ecommerce store and decide to conduct a root cause analysis. You write a clear problem statement that defines when the decline in traffic started and how much traffic has changed since the problem began.
Next, you sit down with your entire team—including your web developers, graphic designers, product managers, and marketing and sales teams—and together, you brainstorm a long list of potential root causes that could be responsible for the problem. You organize the list into a fishbone diagram and place the causal factors under branches representing categories like advertising, search engine optimization, and website design.
After analyzing each of your causal factors, you realize that the main reason your website traffic is down is because your ranking on search engines has declined. You dedicate resources to better search engine optimization practices, including improved keyword research and a new content marketing strategy. After implementing these solutions, you monitor your website traffic and determine that it’s increasing. You’ve successfully addressed the root cause of your website traffic problem.
Root cause analysis FAQ
What does a root cause analysis show?
A root cause analysis examines the factors causing a problem impacting your company in order to better understand how to fix an issue.
What are the different root cause analysis methods?
There are several different root cause analysis methods, including the fishbone diagram, the Five Whys, and the Pareto analysis.
What are the important principles of root cause analysis?
Some of the most important principles of root cause analysis include open communication, empirical evidence, avoidance of blame-placing, and the prioritization of corrective actions.
