The seven success factors of time intelligence

Date-time analysis is a central pillar of modern analytics. Every business needs to track progress over periods of time, and more importantly, compare and evaluate that progress between two time periods. Obvious examples include: comparing the fourth quarter of a year to the same quarter of the previous year, or comparing this month to last month.

In data science there are two different types of date-time functions:

1. Date-time groupings – Where data is bucketed for the purpose of further analysis, and
2. Date-time calculations – Where totals are calculated according to different time periods like year-to-date, month-to-date, etc.

An effective BI tool requires seven key time intelligence capabilities. Without these, you simply have the wrong tool.

1. Database-resident definitions of buckets – During the modeling process, you must be able to create time intelligent fields in the database based on date fields.
2. On-the-fly definitions – Where it’s not possible to write back to the database, which is often the case, you must be able to create on-the-fly definitions for date buckets.
3. Code-free calculated objects – You must be able to click and create calculated objects like year-to-date, month-to-date, etc.
4. Parameter-driven date ranges – You must be able to input dates that drive all related calculations, with the ability to define date ranges on the fly.
5. Measure-independent date-time objects – You must be able to define a date-time calculation object and it should then work for all measures automatically without having to code for each measure—e.g., sales, expenses etc.
6. Custom calculations – The BI tool must be able to expand and adjust date-time calculations for a specific user query (e.g., what were year-to-date sales two years ago).
7. Code-free solution – The less code required to answer standard questions, the better.

Further reading

For more on Pyramid’s solution for time intelligence see blog links below:

• Pyramid’s powerful, simple, and code-free tool for calculating/displaying time intelligence.
• Date-time grouping capabilities let users quickly “bucket” time intelligence periods.
• How to bucket time intelligence periods to quickly visualize grouping capabilities.
• Custom date-time calculations amplify Pyramid’s dynamic time intelligence capabilities.
• Date lists and ranges give users pinpoint control over date-time parameters within Pyramid.