Total 249 / Zhang Junhong
Why has the consumption of table salt increased recently? If you are the data analysis of the administrative department, your main job responsibility is to analyze the usage of various consumables in the company. If one day you suddenly find that the company's salt purchases have started to increase sharply in the recent period? How would you analyze it at this time?
Here is the background: Generally companies will put some condiments in the rest area, including salt, vinegar and the like, because many people will use it when eating in the rest area.
To analyze why a certain indicator rises or falls, one of the commonly used methods is to sort out the conversion funnel. For example, if you find that an advertisement brings a relatively small amount of orders, you can sort out this advertisement from the beginning to the end. Which links will go through when placing an order, and then specifically analyze which link has gone wrong. The common advertising conversion funnel is shown below:
So if you find that the company's salt purchases have increased, you can also try to sort out a conversion funnel first, which can be summarized into the following links:
Company procurement — administrative staff receive the rest area — company employees use.
Based on the above conversion link, we can initially guess that there are several reasons: the first is that the amount of employees actually used has increased, the second may be that the administrative staff has received more and then used it themselves, and the third may be that the company’s purchases falsely reported the purchases. . Suppose we have found that the use of company employees has increased recently, and not for other reasons. Then we need to analyze why the amount of salt used by employees has increased recently?
Is it because the company has recently expanded its enrollment, the number of people has increased, and the amount of salt has also increased? After confirming with HR, it was found that there was no.
That's because it's winter recently, and everyone doesn't want to go out to eat, and they all start ordering takeaways. It just so happens that the taste of takeaways is relatively weak, so the amount of salt has increased? If possible, I decided to investigate with the security guard at the door to see if the number of people ordering food has increased recently, and I found none.
It may also be because of the recent epidemic. Everyone has started to cook and bring meals. Many people are just starting to learn to cook. It is inevitable that the amount of salt is not in place. It happens to be a small amount, so it can only be in the company. add a bit? After research, it was found that more people do cook and bring food, but all of them are chefs, and this is not the reason why the amount of salt is accurate.
What could be the reason? Be puzzled, so I can only use nirvana: from the masses, to the masses, approach the user, and see what the user is doing? After a week of observing in the rest area, I finally found the answer. The reason for the recent increase in salt consumption is that the recent afternoon tea is made of grapes every day. Everyone washes the grapes with salt water. The mystery is finally revealed. It was never thought that the reason would have something to do with what afternoon tea is.
Similar to the short story above, we often encounter in our daily analysis work, such as the sudden increase in traffic, and the sudden increase in order volume. If you don’t understand the business scenario, you can only take the data and dismantle it. , Dismantling various dimensions, dismantling various indicators, and finally dismantling the world without finding the essential reason. That’s why I’ve always said that whether it’s Excel, SQL, or Python, it’s just an analysis tool. The core is the understanding of the business. You only know who your users are, where they are, and where they are. This kind of situation will require you so that you can see the essence through the data, otherwise you can only disassemble the dimensions.
But to achieve a sufficient understanding of the business, there is no quick way. You can only go to the user, treat yourself as a user, and think about what would happen if you were a user?