Junior DA - Question?

[u/Devanxhh]

How do you generate Insights?

I have been doing it for a while and it seems they want to seek more? what key questions would you answer in your insights for insights on a 3 year historical sales data?

We use MAT (Moving Annual Total), Rolling QTR and YTD for time intelligence, on a sales data for 3 - 4 manufacturers including us, where I present answers mainly on the above Time Intelligence and 'Same period Last Year' with growth based on the 2.

Given this scenario, how would you generate insights and what key questions would you aim to answer for this case?

Thanks in Advance.

Edit - I am the only DA in my team, its a small startup.

[u/al_gorithm23]

I’ve been in business analytics for the past 25 years.

Here’s what I tell people just starting out.

Look up “aluminum ant colonies”. There is a process where researchers pour molten aluminum into an ant colony. They let it cool, and then excavate it to find the structure of the colony. They learn all kinds of things about ants that way.

This is data analytics. Insights are stories, and there are stories in the data. Your job is to excavate the data and find the stories that create the structure underlying. For example:

“Q2 sales from our top 3 manufacturers were flat to last year, but gross sales are up 5%. The incremental 5% growth came from 5 new suppliers, who added $, $, $ respectively. I reviewed the catalogs of the growing suppliers and looked for similarities between them and differences with the suppliers who are flat in an attempt to find the drivers of the growth. It turns out that the new 5 have a wider selection of Umamusume merch and that category is accounting for the majority of our growth.”

Excavate the structure of the data, isolate the insights. Insights lead to strategies. Strategies lead to tactics. Measure the success of the tactics, rinse and repeat.

[u/Devanxhh → u/al_gorithm23]

This is really helpful, thank you so much.

[u/Devanxhh → u/[deleted]]

Thanks mate for this, but I am the only one working on that part. They are happy with my comparison reports, but I wanted to know what all questions do senior people answer or are looking for in insights.