Today I want to talk about understanding your data. Being a great analyst is the ability to generate insight from data. In most all cases, you will need to look at a set of data and tell an audience what the key takeaways are and sometimes what should we do next with this information. In order to build a thoughtful analysis, you really need to understand the data. For me, the best way to do this is to understand what has occurred in the business in order for this data that I am looking at to be generated. In a simple example, let’s say you own a shop and a customer purchases an item. Most data sets would record the customer information, the order information, and line items of that order. Depending on the items purchased, you will have 1 to many lines of data for that one specific transaction. Of course, this is a pretty basic example so now imagine this is an e-commerce shop. Not only will you have transaction and customer data for the order, but now you most likely have web traffic data and can analyze the events or actions a customer took before purchasing. Depending on the business, the variety of data you have will greatly change. Therefore, it is imperative that you really understand what occurs business wise that causes this data to even exist. The more, you as an analyst, can tie the data back to the business the more valuable you will be in your career. Remember, it is not about creating amazing analysis that help you, it is about creating amazing analysis that educate your audience…and you cannot educate anyone if you do not understand a topic.

So next time you start an analysis, I advise you to take a step back and ask “What happened in the business for this data to occur?”

 

Happy analyzing,

Christopher Doidge

Owner – UI Consulting

www.uiconsulting.com