Data + Business - The way forward

Let’s discuss a use case where business knowledge combines with data.

In the world of Fintech everything is based on from where the money is coming and where it is going, the more this cycle increases the better it is for the company as it increases the commission being earned.

You get a requirement to analyze the active merchants in your portfolio and get how much revenue they are bringing in. The first question will be what is active merchant?

Well this varies within Fintech too but in a transacting business an active merchant is someone who has recently used your services to transacted his/her money. If the merchant has not used your services for ‘x’ number of days then the merchant is an inactive merchant in your portfolio. This number varies according to the nature of the business and a lot of other aspects.

If you know this then you can easily chop out the merchants from your analysis.

For example in SQL it would be:

SELECT merchant_id, sum(revenue) FROM table1 WHERE SYSDATE — TRANSACTION_DATE < x

This is a dummy query that will do the job but the analysis is not only limited to this.

Data has many aspects but covering the business knowledge is essential as well.