Every entrepreneur I know loves to analyze data and metrics about their business over time. How’s our revenue growing? How many daily active users are we averaging? Only, the data is often in summary form in a spreadsheet making it hard to analyze. Eventually, an analytics and reporting system is necessary to better analyze data over time and present it in an actionable manner.
Here are some common questions to ask when analyzing data over time:
- How are we doing this month/quarter compared to this time last month/quarter (ideally with a chart showing both lines)?
- What’s our trailing 30-day average as measured on a daily/weekly basis?
- What’s the rate of change on a weekly/monthly/quarterly basis (are we accelerating or decelerating)?
- What’s our expected results for the rest of this month/quarter based on the previous data and corresponding results (predictive analytics)?
Analyzing data over time is a critical part of every weekly leadership team. Use analytics and data platforms to automate the collection of data and generation of reports that show both the metrics and more detailed analysis.
What else? What are some other common questions to ask when analyzing data over time?
David Cummings on Startups 