Design for business insight
Identify business insight needs
It is important to identify and determine how the data in your application is reviewed and analyzed for insight. The needs drive creation of reports, landing pages, dashboard widgets, and in some cases, feeds to other data stores. Business insight needs also impact the design of the data model and data tables.
Explore business insight needs
Work with your team to explore and identify the business insight needs related to the application. Performing an initial assessment of business insight needs early in the project helps inform the design efforts. This assessment also helps you validate and update the product backlog with necessary items.
Review the following examples of business insight conversations to practice an initial assessment. This example assessment is for a loan application that collects and processes requests for small business loans.
| Example Question | Example Discussion for Loan Processing Application |
|---|---|
| What information is needed to track actual results against the intended business outcomes? |
One of the intended business outcomes is that the application automates 90% or more of the decisions to approve or decline loan requests.
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| Are there significant existing information gaps that must be addressed? |
The business believes that there is a high rate of abandonment on requests that are indicated for manual review. However, the current system does not track this information.
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| Are there existing reports that are critical and necessary to continue? |
The existing reports focus on the number of loans and the amount of each requested and accepted each week.
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| Are there key decisions in the application that must be monitored and reviewed? |
The manual decisions to approve or decline requests must be monitored and reviewed.
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| Are there key activities in the application that need to be monitored and reviewed? |
The key activities align to the major stages of the process.
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| Who requires access to this information? |
The product management team for small business lending needs access to this information.
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Establish a high-level approach
The team agrees on an approach to meet business insight needs. This approach guides the team as they perform the initial design and continue to expand the application. Work collaboratively with your team to develop a sensible approach for the future. Consider using show and tell sessions with your end users and stakeholders to enable the team and gain an understanding of approaches that are currently in use, as well as other potential approaches.
Review the following examples of business insight conversations to practice establishing an approach that meets the business need. This example approach focuses on a loan application that collects and processes requests for small business loans.
| Example Question | Example Discussion for Loan Processing Application |
|---|---|
| What reporting is performed directly in the application? |
The small-business lending team does not have a separate data warehouse, nor do they have expertise with business intelligence tools beyond Microsoft Excel.
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| What reporting is performed in other tools? |
The Product Analysts are heavy users of Microsoft Excel and often create analysis tools in Excel to meet data analysis needs that are outside the current capabilities of the application.
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| Will data need to be exported to other tools? |
The ability to export to Microsoft Excel is necessary based on earlier discussions. The company is also in the early stages of creating a data lake, but it is too soon to know the status of the data lake.
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| Do users need the ability to edit or create their own reports? |
Product analysts are expected to create and edit reports as part of their job. Managers and directors expect to use existing structured reports. They want to select criteria but do not want to be responsible for editing or creating reports.
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| How are real-time reporting needs met? | All reporting available within the application is expected to be real time or near real time. |
| How are historical analysis needs met? |
The product analysts use a 12-month rolling view of request data to inform their trends and forecasts. The financial analysts in the accounting department look at five years worth of data for their analysis. However, the financial analysts currently use and continue to use the lending system of record for their analysis.
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| How are performance considerations of extensive reporting managed? |
The speed of the loan processing application is critical to end users. If the application runs slowly, even for a few minutes, applicants are quick to abandon it and try another lender instead.
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