1. Reporting analytics
Hello again! Excellent job so far!
2. Analysis workflow
You have reached the final stages of the analysis workflow - dashboarding and communicating insights. You have managed to analyze your data and obtain some interesting results, but the challenge now is to choose the key points you want to communicate and mold a coherent story for your audience. In this chapter, you will create several final data visualizations needed to tell your story, and then you will create dashboard sheets to communicate the most important results.
3. Objectives
Before creating any dashboards or stories, you must focus on what Acropolis Retail needs to make business decisions related to its inventory. The management team said they wanted to know what items would be best for renewing or increasing inventory while also having an idea of the influence of the categories and countries on different variables. So you will have to make sure these business requests are considered.
4. Preliminary results
First, let's recall what you have found during your analysis.
You have found that the item "Grow a flytrap" has more sales, but the inventory turnover shows that "Doughnut lip gloss" sells faster.
When comparing 2020 and 2021, we saw that the "Set of 6 soldier skittles" increased more in sales.
And finally, the ABC analysis shows that besides their differences, all three items belong to class A, a small group that covers up to seventy percent of total revenue.
5. Telling a story
Data storytelling is an important aspect when it comes to considering your findings. It would be best if you choose ways to show your results so that the positive impact they can have on the company's inventory procedures is clearly visible.
This could include recommendations on items that sell at a higher rate and so require more proactive restocking procedures. Or you could suggest that stock management can be improved by removing poor-performing items and reducing overall waste.
6. Building a dashboard
When creating your dashboard, it is essential to remember some good practices. Your dashboard should generally contain your main discoveries, be concise, use well-defined labels, provide reference values, and make things interactive.
7. Dataset update
After the work you carried out on the ABC analysis of the company's inventory, the IT department at Acropolis Retail introduced new columns into the raw data extracts produced for analysis work. Two new columns have been added to the Stock table you used in this case study. The columns are Running_Total_Revenue_2021_Percent and ABC 2021. This will be very handy for taking your inventory analysis to the next step.
8. Next steps
Your next steps involve further analysis related to the business objectives Acropolis Retail has communicated with you. This might require you to create some new calculations. You will then create dashboards that will include recommendations on purchases, present information by category, and finally, show some important suggestions for stock management.
9. Let's practice!
Time to crack on with the remaining tasks ahead! Good luck!