# You ask the questions. Middleout does the investigation.

Middleout investigates the way a good analyst would: it considers several possible causes, looks in your data for what confirms or rules out each one and reaches a conclusion with its numbers. You decide what's worth investigating.

## How an investigation works.

### It starts with a business question

An investigation is born from a question that matters: why repeat purchases dropped, why one store sells less. You open it from the chat or ask Middleout for it directly. It has an owner and starts as yours; when it's ready, you publish it to your team or the whole organization.

### Several causes at once

A rushed analysis settles for the first explanation that fits. Middleout proposes several possible causes at the same time and puts them up against each other. You can add the one you suspect: your intuition enters the investigation as one more cause and is checked with the same rigor.

### Every number, for or against

Middleout searches your sources for the numbers that confirm or rule out each cause and notes where they come from: which table and which definition they were calculated with. What has no data yet isn't ruled out: it stays open, in plain sight, until there's something to answer it with.

### A conclusion your team accepts

When a cause is confirmed, Middleout proposes a conclusion tied to the number that makes it true. Nothing becomes part of what your company knows until a person accepts it. When you accept it you can note what was decided, and that decision is recorded next to its evidence.

### It keeps being checked

A conclusion isn't filed away and forgotten. Middleout checks it again against each day's data and tells you if it stops holding. The new questions it left open are ready for the next investigation.

### It stays in memory

The whole investigation, with what was ruled out and why, stays in your company's memory. The next time someone asks something similar, Middleout starts from there instead of from zero. And from the investigation you ask, in one sentence, for the dashboard to follow the number or the presentation for the committee.

## Questions about this

### How does what my company knows grow?

Through its people. Every time someone asks, analyzes or investigates with the company's data and documents, they find out something nobody knew before. Middleout keeps it so it isn't lost, and what your company knows grows with every question.

### How do I get started?

Request early access. When we open for your company, you connect your sources and start asking and investigating.