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My previous post introduced an analytics taxonomy consisting of four categories: Describe, Discover, Predict, and Prescribe. Here, I'll expand on the first two, Describe and Discover.
I'm addressing these two in the same post because - as the illustration shows - they actually lie on opposite ends of a spectrum:
- Describe are simple views that provides managers with only basic information to describe what happened. A couple of common styles used to present information this way are static reports and static dashboards. This style of BI doesn't provide any way for a user to interact with, or manipulate, the data – it provides a simple statement of fact. For example, these basic reports can be used to inform people about simple facts – weekly production levels, compliance with safety regulations, spare parts inventory – and so on.
- Discover helps managers to understand simple cause-and-effect – moving from merely seeing what happened to understanding why something happened. Note, there's a distinct overlap with the Describe category – in practice Describe and Discover form a spectrum of solutions. In the middle of that spectrum would be interactive dashboards. An interactive dashboard allow a user to navigate through layers of data – starting from summarized information and "drilling-down" to more detailed data. Further over to the far right of that spectrum would be visual data discovery tools. This type of tool allows a moderately skilled user to explore and navigate data largely free of constraints. While interactive dashboards can people to find the answers to anticipated questions, the flexibility provided by visual data discovery tools is ideal for helping managers to find answers to un-anticipated questions.