What is meant by 80-20 rule.
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80-20 rule, also known as the Pareto law, is a maxim that asserts that 80% of
the effect (or output) occurs in 20% of all causes (or inputs) to a given
event. One goal of the 80-20 rule in business is to identify and prioritize the
potentially most productive inputs. For example, once managers have identified
the factors that are critical to business success, those factors should be the
most focused.
The
80-20 axiom is widely used in business, but the concept can be applied to any
area, such as wealth distribution, personal finances, spending habits, and even
denial of interpersonal relationships.
look at a glance
--- The 80-20 rule says that 80% of
the effect (output) can be traced back to 20% of the cause (input).
--- The 80-20 rule prioritizes 20% of
the elements with the best results.
--- The principle of the 80-20 rule is
to identify a company's best assets and use them efficiently to create maximum
value.
--- These "rules" are
commandments, not rigid mathematical laws.
Realizing
the 80-20 Rule
The 80-20 rule can be thought of as a simple
cause and effect. 80% of the effect (output) comes from 20% of the cause
(input). This rule is often used to indicate that 80% of a company's revenue
comes from 20% of its customers. Viewed this way, it can be advantageous for a
company to focus on the 20% of customers who account for 80% of its sales and
to market them specifically.
Core Principle
The key to the 80-20 rule is to identify your
company's best assets and use them efficiently to create maximum value. For
example, a student should determine which part of a textbook will be most
useful for an upcoming exam and focus on that part first. However, this does
not mean that students should ignore other parts of the textbook.
Often misinterpreted
The 80-20 rule is a commandment, not a constant
mathematical rule. In general, 80% and 20% being 100% is a coincidence. Input
and output do not have to be 100% percentages as input and output simply
represent different units.
The 80-20 rule is often misinterpreted. Sometimes
misunderstandings are the result of logical errors. In other words, if 20% of
the input is the most important, the remaining 80% may not be important. In
other cases, confusion arises from random 100% sums.
80-20
Rule Background
The 80-20 rule, also known as the
Pareto principle and applied to Pareto analysis, was used in macroeconomics in
the early 20th century to explain the distribution of wealth in Italy. The
concept of Pareto efficiency was introduced in 1906 by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, best known for his
concept of efficiency.
Pareto found that 20% of the pea
pods in his own garden make up 80% of the peas. Pareto extended this principle
to macroeconomics by showing that 80% of Italy's wealth belongs to 20% of the
population.
In the 1940s,
Dr. Joseph Juran, a renowned
operations management expert, applies the 80-20 rule to quality control for
corporate production. 80% of product failures are due to 20% of manufacturing
problems. By focusing and reducing 20% of production problems, the company
has been able to improve overall quality. Juran called this phenomenon "a
significant minority and a minor majority."
Benefits
of the 80-20 Rule
While there is little scientific analysis that
can prove or disprove the validity of the 80-20 rule, there is plenty of
anecdotal evidence that the rule is intrinsically valid, even if not
numerically accurate.
The performance results of salespeople at various companies
have proven successful by incorporating the 80-20 rule. In addition, external
consultants using Six Sigma and other management strategies have achieved good
results by incorporating the 80-20 Principles into their practice.
Real-World
Example of the 80-20 Rule
Carla, a Harvard student, was working on a digital
communications course assignment. The project consisted of creating a blog and
monitoring its success over a semester. Carla designed, built and launched the
website. In the middle of the semester, the professor did a blog evaluation.
Carla's blog gained some visibility, but had the least traffic compared to her
classmate's blog.
When to Apply the 80-20 Rule
Carla found an article about the
80-20 rule. After she said she could use this concept in any realm, she started
thinking about how Carla could apply the 80-20 rule to her blog project. She
thought I had put a lot of time, skills and writing skills into building this
blog. However, despite all this energy consumed, the site generates very little
traffic.
She knew that no matter how good
something it was, it was practically worthless if no one read it. Carla
concluded that blogging may be a bigger problem than the blog itself.
Use
To enforce the 80-20 rule, Carla
decided to use her “80%” of everything that goes into creating a blog,
including content. Her "20%" was the number of blog visitors.
Carla used web analytics to precisely
focus her blog's traffic. She asked:
--- What sources make up the top
20% of my blog traffic?
--- Who are the 20% of your target
audience you want to reach?
--- What characterizes this
audience as a group?
--- Can you invest more money and
effort to satisfy your top 20% readers?
--- Which blog posts make the top
20% of the top performing topics in terms of content?
--- Can I improve this topic and
get more attention from my content than it is now?
Carla analyzed these questions and
edited the blog accordingly.
--- She tailored the design and
personality of her blog to match the design and personality of her top 20%
target audience, a common strategy in micromarketing.
--- She has rewritten some content
to better meet the needs of her target audience.
Her analysis confirmed that the
blog's biggest problem was marketing, but Carla didn't ignore it. She
remembered a common error quoted in her article. If 20% of the input is the
most important, then the remaining 80% should be insignificant. And I didn't
want to make that mistake.
Result
Carla applied the 80-20 rule to her blog project to better understand her audience and better target her top 20% readers. Based on her findings, she modified the structure and content of her blog and increased website traffic by more than 220%.