Six Simple Questions…

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I was out last night having some wings and beer with some friends (Dave and Mark) to prepare for our friend Peter Ronson’s stag.  This being probably the last stag I will be organizing, we are having a ball and it looks like it will be a good one.

But innevitably Mark and I will start talking about business.  One of the things we are always talking about is planning and information.  Mark is one of the top Caterers in Toronto.  So these things are crucial to him.  So he shared the six questions that are pertinent to his business…

  • where
  • when
  • why
  • what
  • who
  • how

Pretty simple isn’t it.  But without asking you don’t know even the most obvious of answers.  Good for him to keep it simple.  But the trick with these questions is to get to the heart of the answers.  For example he once told me about a venue they were doing at the Hockey Hall of Fame here in Toronto.  That was an answer to where.  The answer was obvious to him and some of the others, but he quickly pointed out that this is not obvious to people who do not spend a lot of time downtown.  Whether it be guests or other trades that he would use, having the simple address, maybe where the shipping and receiving area is and to know that it is down one level from the street would be very pertinent.

The correlation to Business Intelligence is that you need to remember, you do not always know who is going to be reading your report or seeing your information.  You need to allow for some context or metadata or detail to provide the full picture.

  1. Jim Reply

    I think this is a clear description of an aspect of Business Intelligence. Hopefully it will answer some of those questions. Those questions are really key.

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