Poor Richard’s (Data) Almanack

In any organization, there are bits and pieces of wisdom that float around or get shared as if they’re truth. These maxims, these aphorisms, are often used informally to explain why things happen the way that they do with the business. However, they’re typically more anecdotal than anything else.

It’s always this slow on Sundays. We’re going to run out of bread because there’s snow in the forecast. The NASDAQ is down, so we’ll probably see sales slow in the next quarter. The stores are less crowded because the kids are back in school.

There are a few things that we must realize about these types of statements:

• They might have actual business value in terms of forecasting future trends

• We can’t know unless we put some actual data behind them

• We almost certainly have most of the data around. Somewhere.

Slow on Sundays? Segment your data by day of the week and check to see whether the difference between Sunday sales and other days is statistically significant.

Bread wiped out if there’s snow coming? Even if you don’t have past forecast data at the ready, the government provides historical weather data, including snowfall, across the country going back many years. Use that as a proxy and check your out-of-stocks against the snowfall data.

Sluggish market means lower sales? Pull the NASDAQ closes from the web and execute some analysis to see if you can identify a meaningful correlation, and what sort of a delay it’s on for your business.

Empty stores because of full schools? You know when the schools in your area went back in session; line up the data and check it out!

The data are there to support or rebuff any of these hallway-chatter, watercooler hypotheses. And there’s no lack of them to be found. Ask your employees - all of them - what trends they see in the business from their seat. They’re bound to have a few. Who knows what sort of gut-level observation is out there that you haven’t even thought of doing an analysis on yet.

Your employees - all of them, not just your data professionals - are the key to your business’s success, and they’re tuned in to patterns and trends at a level that your management team simply can’t be. Tap them on the shoulder and ask their thoughts. And then engage your data and analytics teams to put some actual data behind what they tell you. Who knows - you may find an unrealized opportunity that really makes a difference!

And please, stock more bread.