Beyond the Dashboard - Exploratory Analytics

Editor's Notes

1. hello. my name is nnn. welcome to our webinar which focuses on understanding your company's performance during a tumultous year and determine what action to take to minimize, if not correct, the trend. today's webinar should run about an hour.
2. So here is today’s agendaThis Webinar will demonstrate how Quantrix software can help business users employ their data to answer the questions of what happened to their business during a challenging and tumultuous year.  It will further demonstrate how business users can then use that understanding to evaluate various actions to take and determine which is to be taken. Participants will learn:+ How to build an ad hoc analysis + How to use visualization to identify trends and exceptions+ How to use the analysis to create a model for forward-focused planning
3. you have the opportunity to ask questions by using the go to webinar panel on the right side of your screen. if we are unable to address all the questions during the q&a section, we will follow up with you directly.
4. Dashboards revolutionized the way information is brought to the corporate world. It drove Business Intelligence to the “masses” and has for this purpose become effective of delivering data to a variety of users. Through dashboards, BI became more appealing, easier to use and consume. As dashboards can be personalized to a variety of users, it empowered users to take ownership of the data and decisions within their functional areas.Information shown on most dashboards are mostly reports, summary statistics, it also allows you to do slide and dice. You gain insights from such an analysis, but in most cases, the traditional dashboards / BI stops there. Making more data visible and manageable is not enough. You will need to test your hypothesis based on insights gained. (point out that dashboards are prebuilt and if you want to go to a path that’s not there yo are stopped and goes back to IT) So increasingly focus of dashboards or BI now is shifting from providing retrospective analysis from historical data to the use of historical data to solve business problems or understand the benefits of a planned action.This is where exploratory analysis, forecasting, what-if simulations, optimization processes steps in. And this is what we will be focusing on in this webinar.
5. Gartner recently released their list of top 10 technologies for 2011.  And in #5 is Next-Gen Analytics.  Gartner states thatCompanies need to develop “operational analytics” to make predictions and use data mashups. “There’s value in very current information. We are now shifting our focus to start doing simulations and modeling to predict the future,” Claunch said. Algorithms will really matter to companies to support the right type of prediction.
6. Wikipedia defines Exploratory analytics as an approach to analyzing data for the purpose of formulating hypothesis that is worth testing. It is forward-looking, as against the traditional BI that we have been used to, which is backward-looking. Let’s take a simple query as an example. Why is territory X not achieving its targetsIn typical BI / dashboard, what we will want to drill down is to get a list of sales by salesperson, or by product, or by city, or combination of salesperson by product, or salesperson by product by city (slice and dice) and zoom-in to those which are not making any sales. This is fine, as it helps you gain insights, but usually it stops there, without finding out exactly why territory X is not achieving its targets. Because dashboards are usually pre-built. If you need to do further actions, then you would usually seek the help of the IT department who are busy with a lot of other stuff. Translate this to exploratory analytics, using the reports and statistical data from the result of your query, you would want to explore your data then take your data forward by testing your “hunches” or hypothesis. If you introduce more campaigns, for example, will you get higher responses, higher conversion to sales? Or if you just focus your efforts on those who responses, will you be able to lower your cost of sales, and achieve the same or better result, by analyzing the profile of those customers and introduce to them products that fit their profile better?The value of exploratory analytics is the confirmation of your insights or relationships, and the leverage of those insights for better decision-making. Exploratory analytics can be used to improve your sales and marketing effort, develop new products, reduce cost, risk and fraud.
7. Quantrix, is an award-winning solution, that lets you do just that – perform exploratory analysis. It allows users to create dashboards for their data visualization so they can gain insights, but at the same time, create forward-focused models for what-ifs, making your dashboard more interactive and specific to their decision-making needs.Its distinct advantage over the traditional planning applications, is that users can perform these with simplicity and ease, as the demo will show you later, and with affordable price which we can discuss with you later.
8. Here is an example of a sales query chart for your exploratory analysisIn the scenario provided, what you will typically do is to analyze your data, slice and diceThe left pane represents your datasource, and the right panes is where you drag and drop data fields to display facts data – eg sales by year, by color. You can add other dimensions as required eg by salesperson by territory.You can also drag and drop your filters or qualifiersAnd add charts for better visualizationThere is no limit as to how you want your data represented, explore by performing different data combinations – with ease and flexibility.There is flexibility, not pre-built, you can visualize the data, filter records you can read from the database. Exploratory analytics can lead to anywhere the data is leading you to without being stuck of what’s prebuilt.
9. After exploring and gaining insights from your data, next step is to take it forward through modelling and simulations / or what-if scenariosThis is an example of a ability to perform what-if, not necessarily related to the previous screen. But ideally, the user will want to test scenarios by changing parameters, and see the impact quickly in the form of a report, and visual analysisTypically, these steps are done by the data analyst.
10. At the end of the day, you can consolidate the reports, and scenarios in a dashboard for presentation to the business users. Here is an example.
11. In Singapore, "The National University of Singapore has used Quantrix to develop an integrated long-term resource planning model covering all key aspects of university revenue, expenditure, student enrolment and staffing levels. The success of the project has provided NUS with the confidence to extend the use of Quantrix to other areas of financial planning, budget preparation and monitoring."
12. Resources:* 30-day trial.* Should you wish to purchase, you can either purchase online or order through us. If you purchase online, let us know and we will provide you a discount code.* Quantrix forum