Hi I’m Jared Hillam,
Often when Business and IT come to the same
room and begin talking, there are breaking
points where the Business get’s lost in
the technical terminology.
When it comes to data, I’ve noticed this
breaking point often starts when the words
Dimensions, Measures, Hierarchies, and Grain
are used.
This short video is meant to provide some
clarity as to what these items are.
First let’s talk about dimensions, Imagine
somebody presented you an architectural model
of a building.
The first thing you’d likely do is walk
around the model to get different points of
view.
The same is true when navigating data.
For example, you might want to see product
performance over time.
Then get a different point of view and see
regional performance over time.
These represent perspectives which we technically
term as Dimensions.
Dimensions can be anything which can consistently
categorize your data, and provide you with
a better point of view.
Here’s a common list of dimensions you might
find in your business.
Now Dimensions by themselves make great lists,
but they don’t tell us much without marrying
them with some measures.
Measures are the numerical values that can
be added up to provide meaning to your dimensions.
Good examples of measures are revenue, cost,
quantity etc.
So now let’s say that you’re navigating
and investigating the data but you want to
go deeper into a region, and look at its individual
countries and possibly drill into their individual
states.
This is where Hierarchies come into the picture.
Hierarchies break down the dimensions into
navigational paths which you can use to get
to a more granular level detail in the data.
And this brings up a good question.
How granular or how detailed do you want your
data to be?
See the deeper down you go, the more data
you have to both account for in your project
and calculate for the end users.
So commonly, a level of depth must be agreed
upon, which we refer to as the grain of the
data.
The lowest possible grain of data is at the
individual transaction level.
At Intricity, we put a great deal of effort
in bridging the technical conversation so
that it’s meaningful to the business.
We also take the time to understand your business
beyond the headlines.
This simplifies the complexity so that the
people that are funding the project are aware
of what they are getting, and how it’s going
to impact the day to day operations.
I encourage you to visit Intricity’s website
and talk with one of our specialists.
We hope to have an opportunity to work with
you to build your next success story.
