Get beyond the headline before deciding where to act.
See whether a movement is broad, local, offset by another movement, or concentrated in a business combination the standard report never surfaced.
Four familiar investigation traps
Which version of “something does not add up” is yours?
Hidden under the headline
The total looks healthy. One segment is failing underneath.
A company-wide lift makes a struggling region appear positive until the broad and local movements are separated.
See the hidden regional drag → Offsetting movementThe roll-up looks fine because a beat hides a miss.
Two large movements cancel inside the total, leaving the most important variance invisible in the headline.
See the budget variance → Conflicting cutsEvery dashboard points to a different owner.
The same records appear under payer, denial code, and service line, making three plausible stories out of one underlying factor.
See the claims example → The intersection mattersEvery individual dimension looks normal.
The decisive factor exists only in one region × product combination and disappears when those dimensions are viewed separately.
See the product-region surprise →
Questions by metric
Use the business question your team already asks.
FactorPrism does not require a special analytics project. Start with the movement, miss, spike, or variance that is already consuming time.
Revenue
What accounts for the full revenue change?
Separate broad growth from specific gains and declines without a hand-built bridge or balancing plug.
Explore revenue movement → MarginWhere does the compression actually live?
Keep profitable, loss-making, and sign-crossing segments visible instead of averaging them into a misleading total.
Explore margin movement → Plan varianceWhich beats and misses produced the variance?
Locate the business combinations behind the plan gap and keep offsetting performance from disappearing.
Explore budget versus actual → Net flowsDid adds, churn, or mix move the total?
Separate acquisition and churn movements that net together across customer groups, products, and regions.
Explore net adds →Replace the one-off investigation with a repeatable answer.
Stop rebuilding throwaway pivots and queries every time a result changes. Preserve the question, factors, evidence, history, and next checks as a Finding.
The best starting point is a real question
What result is still open in your team meeting?
Bring one unresolved change to a guided evaluation and see which factors FactorPrism surfaces automatically.