Business vs. Facts It’s not trivial to link business-oriented questions like “What shall I do to increase my sales?” with the data-oriented one like “What was the sales last month or year?” Answers vs. Action Whatever information is useless without the context, i.e. what actions can be done upon the received answers, what were the hypothesis used for interpretations etc. My vs. Company’s Knowledge There are missing tools for capturing, sharing and utilizing the know-how of business analysis = interlinked business and data questions with relevant actions That is the space for Activation Maps...

1. Activation Map
Example: Customer Growth Plan
What should I do to increase the sales?
What was the sales by year, month and
customer?
Which new
customers
should I try to
acquire
primarily?
Which
customers
should I try to
prevent from
leaving
primarily?
What is the sum of
sales for each of 10
group of customers
ordered by their
sales?
What is the ratio of sales
per last 3 months to
sales per last 12 months
for each customer?
Which
customers do
belongs to the
first two groups
of customers
by sales?
Which
customers have
the ratio of
sales per last 3
months to sales
per last 12
months lower
than 20%?
Which
customers
could potentially
leave?
Which customers have the ratio
of sales per last 3 months to
sales per last 12 months greater
than 80%, i.e. there’s a significant
growth?
Execute direct marketing or sales
campaign targeted to current
customers with highest sales and risk
of leaving.
Which are the 5
customer
attributes
having the
highest
correlation with
fact of the
belonging to
the group of
customers with
high growth of
sales?
Execute ATL
campaign
focused on
customers with
the attributes
characteristic
for this group
To be
verified:
Was that
assumption
valid in
history for
customers
which really
left?
Assumption:
There is a new
group of
customers on
the market.
Some of them
have already
became my
customers and
belong to the
group with the
high growth of
sales.
Which attributes
are the common
for (new)
customers with
high growth?
Leaving of
which
customers
would be the
most painful
for me?
Total sales is
just one of
possible
indicators,
profitability or
potential
value of the
customer are
examples of
more
advanced.
More questions like “Which
customers are the easiest target for
the additional sales?” etc.