After you identify the major areas of information in a business, the next step in designing an Essbase database is deciding how the database enables data analysis:
If analyzing by time, which time periods are needed? Should the analysis include only the current year or multiple years? Should the analysis include quarterly and monthly data? Should it include data by season?
If analyzing by geographical region, how do you define the regions? Do you define regions by sales territories? Do you define regions by geographical boundaries such as states and cities?
If analyzing by product line, should you review data for each product? Can you summarize data into product classes?
Regardless of the business area, you must determine the perspective and detail needed in the analysis. Each business area that you analyze provides a different view of the data.