INSIGHTS TREE – Learning Launch

Challenge

I belong to the data analytics team for my organization and was involved in one of the projects for one  our clients to identify the insights related to Finance data of the organization. The main scope included   identifying why certain sectors, services, technologies , regions and countries are not performing with  respect to the overall revenue , cost , gross profit & gross margin so that business can take necessary  actions to avoid these misses .The main stakeholder involved was the CFO of the organization for whom  the insights were really important to take financial decisions month-on-month. The ask from him was to  create an UI so that he can use this and just by clicking on the insights and the main insights should be  highlighted to him.

Selection

Our team went through multiple rounds of discussions to find out what should be suitable way to put  the outputs and finance people are mostly comfortable with numbers. We use the technique of  Learning launch to create an interactive UI with numbers on a small data set which can behave as a  prototype to show how the solution works and also the stakeholders would get a sense of how the  solution would eventually look like.

Application

For the first learning launch, we took a small data set with couple of metrics like revenue and cost and  created the solution keeping into account the hierarchy at which the business wanted to see the data. Let  us start with revenue, for revenue we had the overall revenue numbers, Under the overall revenue  numbers, we had sectors in which revenue was divided. Under each sector we had multiple services and  again under each service we had multiple technologies, under each technology we had multiple regions  and finally under each region we had multiple countries. The user was given an option to choose the no  of insights he wanted to see at each level.  Also, he was given an option to choose between metrics which  he wanted to see and compare against another metric. Another feature given to the user was to change  the hierarchy based on his convenience. The prototype was given 5 finance stakeholders to take their  feedback on the same.

After getting the respective feedbacks, changes were incorporated and were applied to the prototype.  Finally, after all the feedbacks were incorporated the prototype was presented to the CFO for hid final  feedback.

Insights

By applying the learning launch tool with revenue and cost numbers, we were able to find out insights  which were important for the business to take actions. The insights clearly showed why revenue and cost  were impacted at each level, the solution was able to find out the most important insights. These insights  were compared against the manual way of insights creation which they followed earlier.

On comparison, almost 90% of all-important insights matched with the client insights. The remaining 10%  were take an area of improvement which would be take up once we start a full-scale work and  enhancement on the solution.

Approach

Given that our team has already gone through several design thinking activities/tools and are at this stage  in the timeline, the learning launch is the appropriate tool. As previously mentioned, our team needs to  review the insight gained from our first  launche and incorporate this insight into future launch designs.  Future launch designs should reflect insight gained, progress made, and come closer to a compelling  solution ready for full rollout.

