Project 1 — Sales Dashboard¶
Build an end-to-end sales analytics solution: from raw transaction data to an executive dashboard that leadership checks every Monday morning.
Overview¶
This is the foundational analytics project — the one most analysts build first and reference in every interview. It covers the full workflow: cleaning messy sales data, analysing it with SQL, and presenting it in a polished Power BI dashboard. It's beginner-accessible but contains depth for every level.
Business Objective¶
Give the sales leadership team a single source of truth for sales performance — revenue trends, top products, regional performance, and sales rep effectiveness — that updates automatically and answers their key questions without an analyst in the room.
Tools and Skills¶
| Tool | Used for |
|---|---|
| Excel | Initial data exploration, quick pivots |
| SQL | Aggregation, joins, time-series queries |
| Power BI | Interactive dashboard, DAX measures, publishing |
| Python (optional) | Automated cleaning pipeline |
Difficulty¶
Beginner-friendly — this is the best first project. Every concept builds on Week 01 fundamentals.
Dataset¶
- Source: Superstore Sales (classic retail dataset) or any sales transactions export
- Download: Superstore Dataset on Kaggle
- Schema details: dataset-guide
Project Files¶
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| business-problem | Business context and questions to answer |
| dataset-guide | Dataset schema and column descriptions |
| data-cleaning | Cleaning steps with code |
| sql-analysis | SQL queries answering the business questions |
| dashboard-design | What to build in Power BI |
| insights-and-recommendations | Findings and recommendations |
| interview-questions | Questions an interviewer might ask |
Learning Outcomes¶
- Clean and prepare retail transaction data
- Write SQL to calculate revenue KPIs, growth rates, and rankings
- Build a multi-page Power BI dashboard with DAX measures
- Design KPI cards, trend charts, and regional breakdowns
- Present sales insights to a non-technical audience