Situation You are a senior business analyst at a highly-regarded subscription-based weekly trade publication. Your job is to write analysis reports that serve as a basis for your publication's feature

Situation

You are a senior business analyst at a highly-regarded subscription-based weekly trade publication. Your job is to write analysis reports that serve as a basis for your publication's feature articles (which are written by your publication's feature writers). You are always part of the brainstorming meeting, whereby initial ideas are developed, but all subsequent initial research and the resulting report is solely your responsibility. (Your report is read and scrutinized by your colleagues and your boss and ultimately available to every person at your publication.) Your next report is due shortly. The brainstorming was supposed to happen today, but unfortunately all your colleagues became gravely ill, leaving only you to come up with the idea, research it, and write the report. 

Guidance

What is analysis? What does the word mean? What other forms does it take? What is its etymology? How does it apply to a business? How do you get information about the business that you can use to analyze? How do you get enough information?

Also think about how to write an analysis. Try this approach: find the most interesting, provocative things about a business -- the patterns, trends, deviations from norms -- that you can find these in reports, statistics, articles etc., and explain them.