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Math Milestone 1

Milestone 1: Analyzing Real-Life Sales Data

As working professionals, we are required to record and analyze data in our occupations. Excel is an indispensable tool to accomplish this requirement in most professional fields. You will be exposed to real-life data retrieved from a toy company.

Look closely at each column heading. These headings indicate the type of data that is contained

within each column. You can access critical information, such as: customer name (these items

are bought wholesale from companies that are reselling them), sales, quantity ordered, and

location (territory, country, and state). You will use this information to analyze the overall

performance of this company and provide insight on its operations. For the first part of this project you will analyze various components of the company and provide visualizations of these performance indicators. For the second part of this project you will create a PowerPoint to present to key stakeholders of the company.

Part One: Excel Data Analysis

For the first part of the project you will analyze a few key performance characteristics of this

toy company. This toy company does business internationally and it is interesting to look at

where the company does business. It is also interesting to observe the types of products that

are popular amongst each country. Consider how you might further develop the markets that

seem promising in your analysis. You are welcome to make more pivots than suggested below

if you would like to do a deeper analysis. First click anywhere on the data and click on “Insert PivotTable”. Add a new PivotTable for each part so you don’t lose your work. In total you will need six tabs—one for the data and five for each of the five pivots/charts you will create. Next please create the following PivotTables and insert PivotCharts as requested:

1) Find the total count of orders in each territory. Then add an additional row below the territory to find the breakdown among each country.

2) Create a pivot that filters the country to only United States. Create a bar graph that

shows the distribution of sales across each state.

3) Create a pie-chart that shoes the percentage of orders for each productline item listed in the data.

4) Create a line-graph that indicates the total sales per quarter over 2003, 2004, and

2005 (*hint add the orderdate column to your pivot and it will populate years and quarters automatically).

5) Create a histogram that shows the distribution of sales across all orders.

Part Two: Preparing a Presentation

For the second part of this project please create a PowerPoint presentation that could be presented to shareholders of this company. You are not required to record audio for this presentation; however, if you’d like to do so you can use Panopto under the Other Tools tab on the homepage of D2L.

Be sure to include the charts from Part 1 in your PowerPoint to emphasize your conclusions and overall analysis of the data. Your presentation should include a written explanation or summary for every graph. First think about some of the important metrics that you could share. First look at your overall customer base. What countries/territories generate the most sales? Which types of products are most popular in different countries?

Second think about the sales of your products. What types of toys are most popular? Do certain regions prefer a particular toy? What time of year do sales peak? Why do you think sales peak at that time of year? Are sales increasing sufficiently by year?

Finally synthesize your findings. Provide an overall outlook of the company. What kinds of marketing strategies do you think the company could use to increase its profit? Should the company target any particular demographics? Based on average sales, should the company provide additional incentives to encourage buying items in bulk?

You do not need to limit yourself to these questions. However, please create a presentation that addresses the overall business strategy of the company and includes the charts that you prepared in Part 1.

Attribution:

Originally Written by María Carina Roldán, Pentaho Community Member, BI consultant (Assert

Solutions), Argentina. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Modified by Gus Segura June 2014.