Overview of Diagnostic Analytics

The basics of diagnostic analytics and more

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Introduction

Organizations use diagnostic analysis techniques for a wide variety of applications including process improvement and equipment maintenance. Our expert explains the basics of diagnostic analytics and how it differs from other branches of data analysis.

Diagnostic analytics is a branch of analytics concerned with using data analysis techniques to understand the root causes behind certain data points. We use diagnostic analysis techniques to answer the “Why did this happen?” question when looking at historical data from a business, practice, or process.

What Is Diagnostic Analytics Used For?

Diagnostic analytics is a form of root cause analysis that explores outliers in our data set and helps us understand why something happened. If our sales dropped 15 percent between February and March, we can use diagnostic analysis methods to help us understand the cause behind the steep decline.

There are multiple ways a company or analyst can conduct an effective diagnostic analytics workflow.

Here’s an overview of the main methods we associate with diagnostic analytics.

Data Drilling

Data drilling consists of performing deeper dives into specific data sets to explore and discover trends that are not immediately visible at the aggregated level of data.

For example, a business looking to understand how many hours its employees spend on manual tasks may start by obtaining a global table of all its people. They might then drill down by region, line of business, or type of role to get a more granular (hence drilled down) sense of how manual work is allocated across the employee base.

There are several techniques and modern software available to do this effectively, from…