In praise of *unactionable* insight

Posted on by Guy Cuthbert

One of the most common requests from my clients is for Actionable Insight; a desire to receive simple, understandable output from analytical activity which provides a clear indication for what they should do. As a request it’s entirely understandable, reasonable and a great focus for the majority of analysis; after all, analysis is most valuable when it directs action and results in improvement. There are, however, two clear cases when the desire for Actionable Insight oversteps the mark and misses the point:
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Managing by Averages… of Averages

Posted on by Guy Cuthbert

Much of my visual analysis is performed to help large companies – usually retailers and their suppliers – to better understand a perplexing problem or opportunity in their organisation. How can we reduce waste in our stores? Which promotions drive the desired behaviour in customers and why? What effect does non-delivery at depot have on availability in store? What’s the optimum product range for our biscuits category? etc.

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Sheet Swapping using Dashboard Actions (or the Illusion of a Full Outer Join on Blended Data)

Posted on by simonrunc

As the title suggests, this nifty trick has the dual purpose of allowing you to trigger sheet swaps using Dashboard Actions and, when two data sources contain different levels of Granularity, it lets you analyse at both levels (the Granularity of the Primary and Secondary data source). This is the ‘illusion of a Full Outer Join’…All seems a little cryptic and techie. Let’s run through an example…

Sheet Swapping on Action

Continue reading Sheet Swapping using Dashboard Actions (or the Illusion of a Full Outer Join on Blended Data)