How to teach AI your business rules (without writing SQL)

The interpretation problem

Raw data doesn't speak for itself. It needs business context:

• What is a "valid sale" in your company?
• When does a customer go from active to inactive?
• Does revenue include or exclude taxes?
• How do you calculate churn: 30 days without activity or 90?

The 5 dimensions of business context

• Definitions and thresholds — what each concept means (sale, active customer, qualified lead)
• Calculation rules — how metrics are computed (revenue, margin, churn)
• Relationships — how concepts connect (an order belongs to a customer who has a salesperson)
• Exceptions — special cases (cancelled sales without refund, grace periods)
• Performance indicators — which metrics your team uses to decide

How it works in practice

Instead of writing technical documentation, you answer business questions with concrete options:

• When do you consider a sale completed?
• When the customer confirms the order
• When payment is received
• When the product is shipped
• When the customer receives the product

Those answers feed the context AI uses to generate dashboards, answer questions, and calculate KPIs correctly.

Why it matters

• Dashboards with numbers your team recognizes
• AI that responds according to your rules, not generic rules
• Less time correcting misinterpreted reports
• Faster onboarding: new members see the same numbers as everyone