Going the extra mile with Item Sales Analysis

Because we’re committed to providing best-in class Jet Reports consulting services, at Onyx Reporting we go the extra mile to deliver everything you asked for, and then some.

I recently received an email from a prospective customer seeking to conduct sales analysis across items.  They wanted to identify the highest total quantity sold in one day over a period of XYZ months.  I whipped up a preliminary mockup and sent it to the prospective client, but my mind continued to churn over the report.

What does this user REALLY want to do with this report?  Max Daily Sales is just one of an infinitude of KPI’s that we might need for sales analysis.  Surely there would be follow up questions.  

• If the report returns a max of 14 units sold, how does that number compare to other days sales?  Does that number represent a massive outlier compared to the average daily sales or do I consistently sell around 10 units a day?
• If 14 is the highest sale, what’s second highest?  Lowest?  
• Do the numbers skew higher on Mondays because of regular orders from one big customer? 
• What about item to item comparisons?  Do all items average 14 units a day? Or are there massive spikes in demand across items?

And that’s just Sales Quantity!  If we consider Sales Amount, there’s a whole world of new KPI combinations to consider!  After spending another half hour mulling over other KPI's that might be valuable for my prospective client’s sales analysis, I started wrestling with Excel's graphing capabilities.

Admittedly due to the data in the sample database, the average (mean) sales are highly skewed toward 0, to the point where it didn't make sense to add the negative tail to the confidence interval.  But, even with this limited sample, we start drawing conclusions as to whether our Max Sales are significantly beyond the daily average or how much deviation we expect within our Daily Sales.
 
At the end of the day, Onyx Reporting is more than a Jet Reports training and report writing solutions company.  With every engagement, I try to work with my client to understand not only what they’re asking for, but what they really want.  

If this blog post sparked curiosity about what Jet Reports and Onyx Reporting can do for your company, shoot me an email at jae@onyxreporting.com, I’m love to hear from you.