Of all of the activities in the PRIME model, investigation is probably the one most widely associated in the business person’s mind with the function of the contemporary knowledge worker/analyst. The analyst, typically responding to a query from management resulting from a reviewing or monitoring activity, examines data at increasing levels of detail in order to find out for the boss what went right or wrong. This examination at levels of increasing detail is often referred to as “drilling down” or “drilling in” to the data. If successful, the investigator uncovers information that was previously unknown and produces new data.
As business processes have become more complex and the amount of data collected about them has grown exponentially, some aspects of the investigation function have been automated through the introduction of data mining tools. In these cases the role of the analyst changes from that of interacting directly with data by drilling down into the details to a more interpretive role of determining the meaning of results from data mining output. However, the analyst’s fundamental investigative function is unchanged. The analyst may well drill down into data in order to better understand and quantify hidden relationships unearthed by the data mining process.
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