Feature Showcase: Uncover Powerful Contextual Data With Filter Delegates

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We released a variety of updates and new features for TARGIT Decision Suite in 2023, each designed to help you advance your business intelligence journey, uncover new insights, and analyze your data in new ways.

One such feature is Filter Delegates, which enables you to filter your data and turn the result – known as a dimension member – into a new filter that can be applied to other data sets.

You can now tell any object in TARGIT to delegate (replace) a drill to a specific dimension within a given data set, creating a subset of dimension members that are then automatically applied as a filter to all other objects. This is particularly useful for performing a basket analysis or gathering contextual data about a certain dimension.

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The hypothetical explanation of Filter Delegates can get a bit complex, so we sat down with self-employed Data Visualization Consultant David Hollinsworth to hear some inspiring use cases for this exciting new feature.

In this blog, we’ll highlight several examples from David on how his customers are already using Filter Delegates to simplify data analysis and get closer to their customers. Then, we’ll drop in some innovative ideas he has for how organizations can use this feature across multiple departments within their business.

Benefits of the Filter Delegates Feature

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In short, Filter Delegates enables TARGIT users to uncover more contextual information behind their data than ever before. But the benefits of this feature don’t just lie in what it helps users uncover, but also in how easy it makes data analysis and visualization.

David explains that, rather than making changes to the data models, you can now modify and filter by multiple data sets right inside of TARGIT.

“This feature saves you a lot of time, and it’s easy to implement and start using. You need some data visualization skills to create the dashboards, but you don’t have to be a technical expert.”

Filter Delegates helps users, like sales reps or HR managers, stay aware of what’s happening within their customer base or inside their organization. Rather than parsing through hundreds of lines of data to uncover critical information, they can quickly get answers or drill deeper into initial results.

David recommends centering each dashboard around a main question and then using that question to create meaningful headers within that dashboard. That way, it’s easier for users to understand the purpose and impact of each dashboard you create. Here are some examples:

Which customers are buying Product B, the complement to Product A?
Which customers aren’t buying Product A or B?
If a customer purchases Product A, but not Product B, what other product(s) do they purchase instead?

By using comprehensive, up-to-date data to answer these questions, sales teams gain a next-level understanding of their customers' behaviors and preferences. This helps them determine where they have the potential to sell more, who they should follow up with for cross-sell and next-sell opportunities, which customers are at risk of churning, etc.

Filter Delegates for the Sales Department

One of David’s customers is already using Filter Delegates to analyze data related to complementary products. In this case, customers who buy Product A should always buy the same amount of Product B. It’s a red flag for the company if customers aren’t purchasing both products, so they use Filter Delegates to better understand why certain Product A customers aren’t buying Product B. The results can be filtered by salesperson, category, brand, and country.

Sales Opportunity Analysis: Which Customers Did Not Purchase Complementary Products Together?

This scenario typically occurs when:

Customers are using Product A incorrectly – without its complement
Customers are purchasing Product B elsewhere
Customers already have a surplus of Product B

Filter Delegates helps sales identify which customers are buying Product A but not Product B so that they can ask customers the right questions. Instead of spending hours cross-referencing dense Excel sheets to learn who purchased what, the sales team can quickly analyze all their customer data and reach out to the right contacts based on their unique purchasing behaviors.

They may ask questions to understand which of the above scenarios is occurring, to recommend Product B, or to discuss if the Product A/B bundle is still the best fit for that specific customer.

Sales Opportunity Analysis: What Did Customers Who Didn’t Purchase Product B Buy Instead?

The same approach is valuable in helping sales representatives suggest relevant next-sell products based on what a certain customer has already bought or what other customers with similar characteristics purchase most often.

In fact, referencing competitor's behaviors can be a great motivator in the sales process. If a customer hears that their competitors are already purchasing and stocking a specific selection of products, they may be more likely to make the same investments than if a salesperson were to simply suggest they buy that same product set with no concrete reasoning behind their recommendations.

Other Potential Use Cases for Filter Delegates

Human Resources (HR)

Maintaining up-to-date certifications is crucial for both the company and its individual employees. In most cases, the HR department is responsible for verifying these qualifications and ensuring every employee stays current on required certifications and licensing. This commitment helps the company meet compliance requirements, offer top-tier services, and supply employees with relevant upskilling opportunities.

So, when a company needs to identify which team members are missing important certifications or get ahead of those whose credentials will soon expire, the HR department can use Filter Delegates to create a list of who has missing or near-expiring credentials, and on which certificates.

Scenario 01: Which Employees Have Expired Certifications?

They can filter and drill down into various employee groups – by department, title, or tenure – then filter each group by certification to see which employees have missing and/or expired certificates.

This data makes it easier for HR teams to follow up with specific action items and reminders for the selected employees, rather than sending out generic certification reminders to the entire company.

Scenario 02: Which Employees Are Behind on Requisite Training?

With the same dashboard, HR can find out which employees are missing the certifications, courses, and licenses necessary for staying up to date on required training programs within the company.

By multi-selecting a combination of requirements, HR can see which employees have not completed the requisite training. Like the example above, HR can use these results to create personalized training and upskilling programs to update off-track team members.

Logistics and Operations Management

Filter Delegates can also be especially useful for analyzing shipping and inventory data. For example, an operations manager might use this feature to identify unusual shipments and learn more about the reasons behind them. Most companies have a preferred logistics partner to help manage costs and ensure consistent delivery times.

However, this preferred partner is not used for every single shipment, and it would be valuable for the company to see which shipments use an alternative shipper, and to understand if there is a pattern as to why the alternative logistics company was chosen.

Scenario 01: Which Shipments Are Not Managed by Our Preferred Logistics Partner?

To find this information, a manager can create a TARGIT dashboard that incorporates both the “equals” and “not-equals” Filter Delegates feature to drill down and identify instances where the preferred shipping partner was not used. Then, they will be able to see which partners were chosen instead, along with relevant order, customer, and employee information associated with each ‘exception’ order.

This information will allow them to categorize exceptions by type and potentially identify trends or patterns among them. That way, they can follow up to understand if it’s always appropriate to use an alternate shipper in these scenarios, if they should be approached another way, or if the company needs to consider switching their preferred shipper altogether.