Discover Relevant Insights Into Complex Problems

Your company’s margins are shrinking and you're not sure why. But with Einstein Discovery in your toolbox, it's time to create a story that will give you answers!

1. From the dataset's menu, select Create Story. Analytics Studio launches the Story Setup wizard. 
2. Based on the data in your dataset, Einstein Discovery suggests creating a story to “Maximize the field Margin.” The story is designed to answer a question: How do I maximize margins? And that question lines up with the most pressing question you have: What happened to lower our margins? You can open the lists below I want to and the field to see the other available selections. But in this case, Einstein Discovery is exactly right, so don’t make any changes. The default story name is the same as the dataset name, but “APDist” isn't descriptive enough. Change it to “Maximize Margins”. Keep the default App as “My Private App”.
3. Click Story Type. For our investigation, we want Einstein to conduct the more comprehensive analysis of the data. Therefore, click Insights & Predictions. 
4. Click Setup Options. For our investigation, let's have Einstein Discovery select the relevant fields for us. 
5. Accept the default (Automated) and click Create Story.

But that’s a discovery you could have made easily enough on your own. The question is, why? What’s the cause? There are more insights in the story — let’s focus on the product with the lowest margin, alternators.

1. Scroll down to the insight with the title “When Distributor is Nisizu, Product: Hybrid Motors and Lift Supports do better”.
   Great—looks like some products are returning good margins, particularly Hybrid Motors and Lift Supports, as the insight shows us. But it still doesn’t tell us why alternator margins are lagging so far behind, so let's keep going.
2. Click Product - Alternators listed under the header “Cases where Nisizu did worse than others:”. The new insight tells you that all distributors are under-performing with alternators, but there’s one that’s doing especially poorly: Nisizu. You suspect that this distributor’s poor performance has had a major impact on overall margins. Let’s take this one step further and find another insight that can tell us why.
3. Above the insight, click Why does this do worse? This kind of insight helps you take a deeper look into the exact factors that led to a particular outcome.

You see a new insight that supports what you already suspected: “Product is Alternators by itself explains 4.123 of the change in Margin.” 

The waterfall graph reveals a new view of your data. The explanatory text says: “Distributor is Nisizu occurs 35.8% of the time globally but it changes to 52.8% when it is known that Product is Alternators.” In other words, Nisizu is responsible for more than 50% of your distribution deals for alternators! That explains a significant part of the drop in margins.

1. On the Insights navigation bar, click Predictions. 
2. In the left panel, click Product and select Alternators from the list. The projected margin is 20.68. 
3. From Distributor, select Nisizu. The projected margin decreases to 15.02, which reaffirms what we already know - that distributing alternators through Nisizu lowers our margin. 
4. Select different distributors until you find one that provides the highest margin for alternators. Consider whether to redirect alternator sales through this distributor.
5. Let’s see how Nisuzu performs with a different product. For Distributor, select Nisizu again.
6. For Product, select Belt Drives. The predicted margin increases to 56.90. Wow! That’s quite a jump! However, before we conclude that distributing belt drives through Nisizu is the best option, let’s try something. To see what the margin for belt drives looks like across all distributors, remove the Distributor filter.
7. For Distributor, click Select an Option (which clears the filter). The margin drops to 49.48. Having Nisizu distribute belt drives improves margin.
8. Select different distributors until you determine which one provides the highest margin for belt drives. Perhaps you can consider redirecting belt drive sales through this distributor.