The Definitive Guide

to Automated
Business Analysis
The key to becoming a truly data-driven
and nimble business
Introduction Contents

The Challenges of Business Intelligence Tools 3

Automated business analysis (ABA) uses artificial
intelligence (AI) to find unexpected changes across all Data Growth and the Value Chain 5
of your data. By using ABA tools, business users receive
simple, impactful insights about their business every
day to keep them on top of their business and inform Tracking the Stories That Matter 7
their decisions. The best tools find these insights quickly,
acting as virtual business analysts and sending rich
insights at the right time to the right people. Critical Business Insights Without Queries 9

A Catalyst for Better Business Performance 11

What Makes Outlier Different 12

Why Choose Outlier 13

Additional Resources 15

2
The Challenges of Business
Intelligence Tools
Over the past 10 years, data visualization dashboards Sophisticated data visualization tools require a host of
have disrupted the traditional business intelligence (BI) resources, including the time needed for implementation,
market and become the defining feature of modern the staff needed to support such tools, robust data hygiene,
business analysis. These tools enable you to assemble data the cost of the service, and a top-down approach that
rapidly, explore hypotheses visually, and more requires you to decide what to pursue.
easily dig into your data. Dashboards are a powerful
way to track and investigate known data patterns but As a result, many enterprises have made significant
they have many drawbacks. investments in BI tools without realizing the
expected benefits.
Today’s BI tools make investigation easier with clickable
dashboards, but they require you to know what questions
to ask and how to ask them. They are an effective way to
monitor your business at a high level, but they aren’t
proactive—often requiring analyst support to discover
or investigate new developments in your business.
Connecting and mapping your data to these tools is
complex, so these tools are often limited in the scope
of information they cover and make it difficult to
discover or investigate relationships between data
from different sources. Data visualization tools still have
their place in the analytics toolkit, but they have some
important limitations.

3
 Top-down analysis. Long implementation period.
Current BI tools take a top-down approach to BI tools may require weeks of staff training

“
analytics. They require you to independently
Imagine the missed develop questions and hypotheses and then
drill down into the data to find answers. The
opportunities hidden top-down approach works well if you already
know what you hope to find. But important
in that huge portion trends and insights hidden below the surface
often get missed because visual analytics tools
of data–60% or
use dashboards to measure performance against
more–that remains predefined or known metrics. That leaves you in
the dark about important information dwelling
unanalyzed because within the unknown metrics.
and up to six months to fully implement.
Data quality issues.
Dashboards only reflect the information
available. If there is missing or incomplete
data, if numbers are wrong because of a
database-load problem, or if the data
mapping process was incomplete, a dashboard
won’t flag the problem. It will simply produce
an inaccurate report.

of tools that are too Requires highly skilled staff.

taxing to use. But what Distilling actionable insights from visual

analytics requires expert data analytics or data
if business analysis science skills, which are scarce and expensive.

”
could be painless? Lengthy time to value.
Most tools require enterprise data to be
transferred to a data lake or elsewhere to be
analyzed, which leads to long, time-consuming
compliance processes before the tools can be
put into use.

4
Data Growth and the
Value Chain Gap
Until recently, the business intelligence value chain
consisted of three types of services: tools to collect
data, tools to store data, and tools to visualize data
via dashboards and spreadsheets. Many enterprises
have devoted significant efforts and expense into
analytics as an engine for data-driven decision-making.
But as data sets have grown from terabytes to petabytes
Business Intelligence Value Chain
to exabytes, the value chain hasn’t kept up with the
volume and increasing complexity of enterprise data.
Collection Storage Visualization Analysis
The result has been a gap between the promise of
business analysis and the reality managers face. On
average, only 27% to 40% of all data within an enterprise Gather and Centralized Charts to answer Insights about
is actually analyzed, according to Forrester. Imagine the distribute strorage and any question changes to the
missed opportunities and lost insights hidden in that huge raw data querying business
portion of data–60% or more–that remains unanalyzed
because of tools that are too taxing to use. But what if
business analysis could be painless?

5
 The next link in the value chain is automated
business analysis, which Outlier pioneered.
Outlier’s platform proactively analyzes all
of your enterprise data and discovers
“
unexpected developments you should look
We’ve gotten massive into. Outlier looks across any connected data
source to find unexpected patterns and then lets
value out of Outlier. you drill down for more information. When sales
of sandals unexpectedly rose in February for one
It’s helped us to be Outlier customer, for example, the company was
able to respond promptly and capitalize on the
a more proactive and
increased demand.
to be a state-of-the-
Instead of relying on the pre-existing data
”
art company. structures and relationships, Outlier takes an
innovative, semantic-free approach. Outlier
analyzes your data in place, across silos and
—Senior Director, without bias to find interesting and important
Global Retailer patterns. Outlier uses AI and machine learning
to discover new trends, data relationships and
sudden developments of many kinds. While the
technology that enables this inside of Outlier is
complex, the results are unique: personalized,
actionable insights called stories that make it
easy for business users to understand new
developments in their business right away.
6
That’s because Outlier is the first truly automated
business analysis platform. By connecting to
dozens of different databases and other BI tools,
it monitors your data around the clock,
contextualizes it with other data, and notifies you
of the most important, unexpected changes. And
it does so in a way that makes data simple to
understand, share and act upon.
Every day Outlier unleashes an army of algorithms
that march through structured data sets such as
Google Analytics accounts, transaction data, SQL
databases, and any other data sets you have
enabled it to access. These algorithms
automatically search for any data or development
outside an expected range, from skyrocketing
bounce rates on a given page to dropping sales
rates of an SKU in a specific region to a record low
in task speed among warehouse employees on
certain shifts.
Its automated data analysis detects trends,
relationships, and unexpected developments in your
data that might otherwise be missed. It alerts you
to these changes, providing detail in stories and the
ability to dig deeper into the root cause analysis. It
helps you identify the information that matters most
and understand the why behind its insights.
Tracking the Stories
That Matter
Outlier delivers the most relevant three to five stories
daily to your inbox in easy-to-understand text and charts Anatomy of a Story
that highlight not only unexpected insights but also the
key drivers behind them. These insights allow you to
exploit unexpected opportunities, solve problems, save
time, and add to the bottom line. What is happening?

Outlier insights contain different types of stories,

depending on how best to highlight the data, along with
additional context for further data analysis. Think of Why does it matter?
stories as a narrative about the change taking place in
your data.

Outlier can track any metric based on its increasing or Where is the cause?
decreasing movement, for example. Marketing teams
track ad performance to see if CPM is increasing
significantly. Supply chain planning managers track
supply chain efficiencies as well as hiccups (see How Who needs to know?
Outlier can help resolve supply chain issues). Customer
Success teams can be quickly alerted of a sudden rise
in service tickets following a new shipping offering.

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“ Outlier delivers results.
For one customer, a global
retailer, the results of using
You can rely on Outlier to analyze multiple data sets daily to identify and monitor important
relationships. Tracking relationships allows marketing teams to understand how product inventory
and online checkouts are related or not. Operation teams can watch supply chain dynamics to ensure
they have a short window to meet delivery SLAs. Customer Success teams can identify relationships
between service tickets and customer segments. The stories you get are based on how your data
Outlier included:
behaves, so there are a variety of story types.

200% • Metric analysis identifies unexpected changes • Funnel analysis flags unexpected
ROI over 3 years in key metrics and their drivers, enabling quick developments in the purchase process,
and precise responsive action. specifying where conversion flows can

100 hours • Cross source analysis highlights relationships

be improved.

of work saved annually
per data scientist
75 hours
of work saved annually
per business analyst
across data sources, illuminating how a change
in one area of the business impacts others.
• Cluster analysis identifies data changes that
typically cause larger systemic shifts,
highlighting data signals likely to have a
greater impact across the business.
• Expert analysis isolates high-value data
patterns, flagging developments that
• Data quality analysis uncovers issues
that may compromise data integrity,
identifying data that should be verified
before it is spread across the organization.
• New data analysis explains the impact of
new data sources, segments, and values,
enabling richer interpretation of a growing
data set,

30% drop historically have high business and

customer impact.
• Intra-day analysis provides granular
analysis of time series, enabling more
in bounce rates for improved precise direction and responsive action.

”
online conversion

8
Critical Business Insights
Without Queries
Uniquely, Outlier delivers critical business insights Outlier alerted its customer to the surprising spike in sales
automatically–no queries required. The platform and the factors behind it so legitimate sales were not flagged
gathers enterprise data and swiftly analyzes those as fraudulent.
pieces and builds insights by looking for emerging
patterns and noteworthy insights. Outlier guides you Because Outlier automates data analysis, unexpected
to the most relevant data and allows you to drill developments and potential opportunities are flagged early.
deeper for more information. Data scientists get more time for higher-level work. Data analysts
gain a deeper understanding of their business. Marketers get
Other tools help you dig into data only if you know quick answers to puzzling developments involving digital customer
where to dig. Spotting trends across millions of data engagement and more. Automatic trend spotting allows you to
points may require weeks, months, or years depending understand what is truly impacting your business and make
on staff resources. Unless you have Outlier, which strategic, data-driven decisions today instead of months from now.
analyzes all your data sets, wherever they are located,
and suggests questions you may want to ask. Here’s
one example: A retailer discovered its online pet supply
sales had jumped abruptly. Was that a sign of fraud or
a shift in consumer behavior?

9

How Outlier Helps
Data Professionals
Each data scientist at one
enterprise customer saved
100 hours annually after Outlier
was implemented. In response
to ad hoc requests for data, the
customer’s global analytics team
uses Outlier’s Explore feature to
easily pull needed data in 45
minutes instead of the full
business day that was required
earlier. The same automated
features delivered 75 hours in
savings per analyst annually.
Thanks to Outlier, professionals
on both teams are more efficient
and have more time to apply their
expertise to more complex issues.
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Surfaces the relevant. Data-in-place analysis.
Outlier performs data-in-place analysis, so
Once connected to your data sources, Outlier
performs consolidated data analysis and there’s no need to transfer data into a data
automatic classifications to find any unexpected lake or establish new data hygiene protocols
to guarantee quality while protecting
developments across all business data
personally identifiable information.
wherever it may live. You don’t need to come
Outlier lets you keep your data where it is,
up with a question or hypothesis to use
so your data storage remains compliant
Outlier; unlike dashboards, it automatically
with regulations.
surfaces the most relevant data. In addition,
Outlier’s AI quickly learns the type of stories
Easy integration with existing data tools.
that matter most to you and your colleagues
and adapts accordingly. Outlier complements existing tools and easily
integrates with your established workflow. It
Know what’s important. connects quickly to Adobe Analytics, Amazon
Using advanced recommender systems and Redshift, Druid, Facebook, Google Ads, Google
adaptive scoring, Outlier’s machine learning Analytics, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Snow-
algorithms isolate the stories that have the flake, Tableau, Teradata, ThoughtSpot, Zendesk,
largest impact on your business and the greatest and many other services.
relevance to each role on a team.
Take action.
Insights arrive in your inbox each morning as
stories in a feed that includes a collaboration
workflow. You can easily message team
members and quickly share stories. Outlier
stories tell you what has happened, why it
happened, and makes it easy to track, share,
and rate the value of each story.
A Catalyst for Better
Business Performance
Outlier empowers users to optimize marketing Forrester notes one Outlier customer, a global retailer, saw a 200%
programs, track changes in buyer segments, find return on investment over three years along with a net present value
product development issues, and more. Outlier is not of more than $800,000. Additional customer benefits included:
a replacement for existing tools or analytics staff but
a complement to them. Outlier helps managers make Increased efficiency of data science team valued at nearly $600,000.
more informed, faster, and better business decisions by Increased efficiency of business analyst team worth close to $400,000.
giving them the insights they need in an actionable and
personalized format. Improved conversion from campaign optimization valued at more
than $250,000.
The Outlier difference was documented by Forrester
Decreased time-to-value from data-in-place analysis. Because of
Consulting in a Total Economic Impact study examining
data-in-place analysis, the customer saved months of time. Other
the potential ROI for enterprise customers. According to
solutions that require customer data to be moved demand time-intensive
the report, “Using Outlier, data scientists can each save
compliance processes that are completely avoided with Outlier.
100 hours annually performing data analysis and
building dashboards for end users. Business analysts can Improved data capture. The customer used Outlier to inform its platform
each save 75 hours annually on research and data team whenever a tag was lost. Before investing in Outlier, these lost tags
manipulation. Other teams, such as product managers, could go unnoticed for weeks, resulting in permanently lost customer data
may also see efficiency gains. Additionally, customers were and a lack of business visibility from that data.
able to improve online customer conversion by reducing
bounce rates by 30% with Outlier’s insights.”

11
What Makes Outlier Different

Outlier’s bottom-up approach sets it apart from other data tools. Outlier delivers the most relevant business
insights automatically. Several other factors also make Outlier’s automated data analysis platform unique:

Flags noteworthy events You set the schedule

It flags potential problems and opportunities using natural language stories, These stories are delivered in a format (email or web-based) and
which are much easier to understand than dashboards. a schedule (daily, weekly, or something else) that you choose.

Optimizes business decisions Outlier adapts to you

Each story optimizes business decisions by including descriptions Outlier learns over time what matters most to you and shapes
of underlying factors or key drivers that may be responsible for an stories to match your priorities.
unexpected development.

Supports unlimited users

Provides sophisticated data analysis
You can have an unlimited number of user accounts at no
Each story is based on sophisticated automated data analysis that additional charge.
independently produces insights about trends, relationships, and
important changes in metrics.

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How Outlier Helps Marketers
One Outlier customer, a retailer
with seasonal products, expects
to see similar year-over-year
patterns when demand for
certain products begins to
increase. Surprisingly the
demand for a product category
started to increase in February,
much earlier than usual. Without
Outlier, the retailer would have
noticed the increased demand
too late to capitalize on this early
interest. Instead, Outlier delivered
actionable business insights by
alerting the customer to this
unexpected development. The
retailer quickly revamped a
planned email marketing
campaign to focus on the product
category in demand. The result?
A 30% sales increase for the
company year-over-year.
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Why Choose Outlier?
Choose Outlier if you want an automated business analysis system that works out of the box,
connects to your other data tools, and sends you the most important business insights every day.
Unlike traditional tools, Outlier can find and locate new relationships across thousands of
dimensions such as revenue, customer interest, website traffic, ad word spend, and warehouse
demands across product lines to find opportunities and problems. And because the cost of Outlier
is based on each data integration rather than headcount, its value grows with every new user
while the price stays the same.
Proactive alerts. No human bias.
No business leaders predicted that a pandemic Bias in data collection and in data analysis
would impact every aspect of global businesses, are well-known issues. The design of visual
on top of the ongoing smaller events that impact discovery tools does not eliminate human bias
companies, from broken plumbing to a shortage because it requires a data scientist to
of labor to interrupted internet access, for predetermine the metrics and formulate the
example. Dashboards can’t respond swiftly to questions and issues to explore. Because humans
unexpected events because unexpected events famously do not know what they do not know,
can’t be predetermined. questions formulated by the users of these tools
are necessarily limited to their perspective. That
means critical but largely hidden business issues
will remain hidden until disaster strikes. Human
bias is one reason for the gap between the
actionable business insights executives need and
the information other tools actually provide.
How Outlier Resolves
Supply Chain Issues

For one of Outlier’s global

pharmaceutical manufacturing Addresses data issues. Quick implementation.
clients, getting a product to
Outlier tracks all available business metrics Unlike dashboard tools that require highly
market starts with cutting-edge
by scouring the data silos within a given trained staff, Outlier does not demand significant
research and development and
enterprise to monitor data too voluminous to new investments. Implementation is easy.
ends with world-class sales. But
analyze using traditional analytics techniques. Outlier quickly integrates with a company’s
success requires managing and
While data dashboards are useful aids, they data sources–no time-consuming configuration,
navigating complex global supply
highlight visual relationships only and can miss training, or data-consolidation efforts
chains, a myriad of regulatory
statistically significant findings. A user may be are required.
processes, and local market
able to see the differences between bars on a
conditions.
bar chart, for example, without understanding
Outlier alerted one customer that if the differences are relevant, statistically
the “Average Time to Dispense” significant, or actionable. That won’t happen
for a cancer drug had spiked with Outlier.
dramatically–from 12 days to 19
days–in a district. The extra week
meant that patients had to wait
longer for their therapy, and
Outler’s customer would lose
revenue. By identifying the supply
chain delay and pinpointing which
distributor was contributing to the
delay, Outlier’s insight enabled the
customer to redirect supply to the
affected district and resolve the
issue overnight.

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Additional Resources
Forrester Consulting Study: The Total Economic Impact™ of Outlier AI
Gartner Report: Market Guide for Augmented Analytics Tools
Forrester Report: Enable an Insights-Driven Business
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Learn more
To find out more, please schedule a personal demonstration
of how Outlier can benefit you and your company.
Get a Demo Contact Us
About Outlier
Outlier.ai is the leading automated business analysis platform used by
global consumer, retail, and financial services brands. Using advanced AI and
machine learning algorithms, Outlier automatically analyzes company data
and delivers easy-to-understand but powerful insights into unexpected shifts
in data like marketing campaign performance, product sales, and supply
chain performance. With it, analysts and non-technical managers alike can
immediately identify and address emerging issues or new growth
opportunities to build a truly data-driven and nimble business.
www.outlier.ai