Josiah Lane - Data Analyst

Case Study

Here’s a simple example of a case study in which data analysis plays a key role in helping a business achieve revenue growth with very little cost.

Let’s say a hard-working woman runs a family-owned restaurant. The restaurant is well-reviewed, and she has a fairly constant stream of customers every day. Yet, the owner still struggles to be profitable. So, she decides to hire a data analyst to examine her restaurant’s case. After analyzing her sales data over time, he uncovers a few key insights to help improve her business.

One such insight is that 20% of the time her customers ordered entree Meal A, they would also order a dessert. This indicates a slight correlation between these two items. When the analyst informs her of this, the owner decides to create a combo of the entree and the dessert, sold at a slight discount.

This means that all customers who would buy an entree and dessert individually would rather buy the combo, of course, and benefit from the discount. However, in addition, some of the customers who would ordinarily purchase only the entree would now rather choose the combo for the perceived added value. Now, instead of her customers ordering entree Meal A with a dessert on top 20% of the time, 80% of the time her customers order entree Meal A, it’s in the form of the combo!

For the final result, she now gains much more revenue in the form of 60% more sales of a slightly discounted version of the dessert.

There are many other insights that the analyst could glean from the owner’s data that could dramatically impact her business - for example:

Which item is the most profitable?
Which item is the least profitable?
Which item has the best margin on profit vs. cost to produce?
What time of day, week, month, or year do certain items sell the best?
By means of data taken from a poll, which items do customers say they want to purchase?
By means of observation from orders, which items do customers’ spending habits show that they want to purchase?
Which employees tend to be working when customer complaints happen?

It’s not hard to see that you only need a few insights like these to turn a struggling business into a successful one, and it’s all backed by numbers and data.

Q: What if I run a business, but I don’t have order or marketing data to analyze - can I still hire you to analyze my business?

A: I would love to work with you in anyway I can, even if you don’t have data prepared for me to analyze. However, in our incresingly internet-connected world, it’s more likely than not that your business already generates this data in a way that is easy to obtain. If this is the case, I would be happy to help obtain this data, and then analyze it.