How to use Question Frameworks to discover critical business insight

Given the volume of data, the task of finding actionable insight is daunting. Where to start. Using a Questions Framework to discover insight helps your business identify critical business questions and ensures you're looking in the right place.

If you can work out what the critical business questions are then you can identify the data you need to help answer them. And if you answer them, or at least shed light on them, you'll become popular... fast.

Will critical questions lead to insight? Perhaps. Importantly, any insights will be very valuable.

Insight is like finding a needle in a haystack, it helps if you're looking in the right haystack!

Involve the Business to Find Key Questions

Sometimes key insights can jump out when exploring data, sometimes something unrelated sparks a thought that uncovers a gem. But many times insight comes from understanding the business and asking questions that start to unlock more knowledge or start to challenge or adjust long-held assumptions.

Once you know the type of questions that leaders are really interested in, assess the data situation. What data do you have, what data might be available, and what data will need to be generated?

With any relevant existing data rapidly complete some initial analysis and visualizations.

In my experience, this starts a snowball effect. Once you show decision-makers some basic analysis and visualizations the real questions start to flow. Decision-makers will have significant domain knowledge and expertise and therefore may see insight or new questions where you don't.  This is fantastic.  Be warned though, they may also pick up on issues in the data, which is also good but can be awkward.

The process of working out the right questions can help you understand what's important. And vice-versa.

Having said all that, will people in the business know what questions to ask? In my experience, many business people will not know. Some because they are focused on the current, some because they don't appreciate what is possible and some because they haven't been asked before. Using a Questions Framework to discover insight and the right questions will help.

A Simple Questions Framework to Discover Insight

To keep things simple it's best to work within a basic framework.

• Break the business down into major areas.  Something like:
  1. Finance
  2. Products and Services
  3. Operations and Staff
  4. Customers
  5. Externals (yes, could be anything. Weather, Commodity prices, Competitors)
• These areas may overlap. If you can, prioritize them or ask the CEO/Owner or similar to prioritize.
• For each area list key strategic goals, KPIs, or similar and leverage these to generate potential questions.  Here are some examples:
  • Finance
    1. What's our most profitable product or service?
    2. Who is our most profitable customer or customer group?
    3. Are there any trends in sales/profit?
    4. Can we attribute any non-production costs to specific clients or client groups?
  • Products & Services
    1. Do our biggest customers buy all of our products and services?
    2. Could any of our products and services be bundled together?
    3. Which product or service grew the least in terms of revenue or profit in the last year?
    4. How does each product and service perform geographically?
  • Operations & Staff
    1. Which suppliers give us the least issues?
    2. Do any of our operational areas or people have spare capacity?
    3. What are our biggest product quality issues from a cost perspective?
    4. What is staff turnover by business area?
  • Customers
    1. Are there any trends in sales of individual products and services?
    2. What sales channel is the most effective?  Is it always the most effective?
    3. Are there any trends in customer churn?
    4. If we had to divide all our customers into 5 groups how would we do it?

Develop your own framework that suits your business. If you're not sure start with an organizational chart.

Prioritize Your Questions

Following the process above you will end up with many, many questions. You need to work out your top few questions. The rest can wait. Be pragmatic, if you know good quality data exists that could help answer one of your top questions make this a priority.

Answer one of the questions and get some results. Trust me, results will lead to more questions, more support, and bigger budgets.

A final quick word of warning... beware of question traps. I've been in the position of being asked something that is effectively impossible (what new products will our competitors launch over the next 5 years?) or being asked only about something which is front of mind (I have a presentation tomorrow and need to know X).  Although both of these types of questions can provide some insight into what leadership is thinking they are generally just unintentional traps and big time-wasters with little hope of positive results.  Ask those same people for advice on your framework and get them thinking about true priorities.

Importantly, keep listening, quality questions will surface.