Hey everyone!

Back from vacation and wanted to circle back to the blog, missed you all!

First up, please remember to try and stay away when you’re on holiday or vacation, your brain needs the disconnect to come back refreshed 🙂

Today I’d like to share a recent success from U&I Consulting.

As you may know, my specialty is with data visualization. I love taking data and creating visual charts, graphs, and flows to best show people what their business has recorded.

When I started U&I I focused strictly on using Tableau to accomplish this, but as I have worked more and more with clients my services evolved.

I noticed that the bigger disconnect wasn’t so much visualizing the data but actually using data to make more informed decisions.

Now, this is a VERY BIG scope. It is not as strictly accessing information to make better business decisions, take a step back, it can be as simple as using item specifications to ensure order accuracy from your sales reps. It can even mean placing checks along a purchase order to ensure your purchasing department doesn’t send off an order for 1 million units when you actually meant 1 thousand.

As you can probably guess, I saw the opportunity for data governance and quality really emerge.

So on to the success, I started working with a client recently who was set on creating a price list that his sales reps could use to improve order accuracy for windows and doors. When I signed on, they gave me a rather clunky price list that was VERY difficult to read let alone understand. I found that my understanding of data structures helped me to work with the business not only to create the price list they were after but also streamline the ordering process. Now the sales rep can just use drop downs in an excel to select product, location, and options. The tool does the rest.

The feedback I received was incredible, they loved it. Happy to share they are now onboard as a new client of U&I Consulting but also happy to share with all of you that analytics is not just manipulating data but also simplifying business problems.

I hope this post helps you young analysts see the value of always connecting data back to the business. The fact that you understand data and the relation between that and the functions of the business will make you invaluable.

As always happy analyzing,

Chris