The 5 Dimensions Every Great Analyst Defines Before Starting Any Analysis

Before you start any marketing analysis, there’s one thing that will make or break your work - defining your data cube. These five dimensions are essential for clean, efficient, and trusted insights.

While it may seem fundamental, not everyone recognizes that before you begin an analysis you must define the five dimensions of the data you want to work with.  Often your business partner  doesn’t even consider these, but you as the analyst must be prepared to ask your business client about the scope of the analysis before you embark.  Regardless of industry, channel, B2B v. B2C, etc., these five dimensions apply in all circumstances.

Failure to do this could lead to frustration among all parties, repeating the work, perceived poor quality and overall, inefficiencies.  Best practices:  before leaving a business client’s  office (or virtual call / office), make sure you have agreement among all parties the definition against all five dimensions and follow-up in writing what you are about to embark upon.

What are the five dimensions?  Well, some may argue there are more than five and we agree that there may be more, we at TAP Analytics believe there are five fundamental dimensions of a marketing data cube you need to define the scope of before embarking on an analysis, as follows:

1. Time - What time periods do we want to investigate?  Is it this week vs. prior week?  Or this year vs. YAG?  How about daily or weekly trends over the past five years?  Define the time periods up front.

2. Geography - The globe? USA only?  48 contiguous states only? West of Mississippi vs. East of the Mississippi?  Key, major accounts vs. general accounts?  Anchorage, Alaska DMA?  Anchorage, Alaska MSA?  Define the geography(ies) up front.

3. Product - All the mutual funds we offer?  Just blue chip mutual funds?  Blue chip mutual funds that have been open since 2005 or before?  All companies have a hierarchy to their product offerings.  Define the products of interest up front.

4. Measures - There are perhaps too many marketing metrics out there.  However, what are the metrics that matter in this situation?  Is it sales? Profit? Lifetime value?  Clicks? Downloads? Trial and repeat? Price elasticity? Market basket (aka affinity) uplift scores? For any given analysis, you will more than likely have 5-12 metrics that are key to helping extract insights, but you will need to look at others, as well.  Define the measures of importance up front.

5. Customers - All customers to consider, in aggregate?  Loyal customers only?  Lapsed customers only?  Loyal customers with a baby in the household only?  Or is it one customer group versus another to look at growth?  Or decline?  Or do we define some cohorts of customer groups to look at?  Define the customers of interest up front.

Getting the scope defined against these five dimensions is fundamental.  Good analysts execute against these defined dimensions.  Better analysts anticipate that changes will take place, so when extracting the data, perhaps go outside the bounds (a bit) to provide you and your management flexibility.

TAP Analytics are experts in training and educating analyst communities.  We have helped our clients coach junior to senior analysts on multiple topics from conducting analyses to managing upwards, effectively.  If you’d like to learn how we may be able to help your organization, get in touch with us as hello@thetapconsultancy.com.