Cut to the Truth: Answer a Business Question

As the wealth of data available to consumers of Business Intelligence in your organization exponentially increases, so does the opportunity to expose all this data... Even when we shouldn't...

What?? Don't leverage any and all information to analyze every aspect of the situation? Bite your tongue!

When we have decision makers that need to make a call and move on to the next problem, they don't have the time (or the patience) to sort through endless reams of data to find the nugget or two that will help them make the decision. It is critical that we always ask the golden question, "What business question are we trying to answer?"

Once we have identified the end purpose of our analysis, we can then focus our energies on leveraging all this data to show the proper trend, scoring or visualization as our end result. Don't try to overcomplicate your analysis, just focus on the 80% value you can deliver with 20% of the effort. Your customers will love you for making their jobs easier, and your solutions will be less costly and easier to maintain.

Don't you love the 80/20 rule? Simplicity at it's best.