What-if Analysis for Business Professionals: Current Practices and Future Opportunities

What-if analysis (WIA) is essential for data-driven decision-making, allowing users to assess how changes in variables impact outcomes and explore alternative scenarios. Existing WIA research primarily supports the work"ows of data scientists and analysts, and largely overlooks business professionals who engage in WIA through nontechnical means. To bridge this gap, we conduct a two-part user study with 22 business professionals across marketing, sales, product, and operations roles. The #rst study examines their existing WIA practices, tools, and challenges. Findings reveal that business professionals perform many WIA techniques independently using rudimentary tools due to various constraints. We then implement representative WIA techniques in a visual analytics prototype and use it as a probe to conduct a follow-up study evaluating business professionals' practical use of the techniques. Results show that these techniques improve decision-making e$ciency and con-#dence while underscoring the need for better support in data preparation, risk assessment, and domain knowledge integration. Finally, we o%er design recommendations to enhance future business analytics systems.