Business Problem — Sales Dashboard¶
Company Context¶
Superstore Co. is a national retailer selling furniture, office supplies, and technology products across four US regions. Annual revenue is around $2.3M across ~10,000 orders. The company has been growing, but leadership is "flying blind" — every report is a manual Excel export that's a week out of date by the time it reaches them.
The problem: The VP of Sales spends the first two hours of every Monday building a spreadsheet to answer the same questions: How did we do last week? Which products are selling? Which region is underperforming? Which sales reps need support? She wants this automated.
You've been asked to build a dashboard that answers these questions automatically and updates when new data arrives.
Business Questions to Answer¶
Q1 — Revenue Performance¶
- What is total revenue, and how does it trend month over month?
- Are we growing year over year?
- What is the average order value, and is it changing?
Q2 — Product Performance¶
- Which product categories generate the most revenue?
- Which individual products are the top sellers?
- Which products generate the most profit (not just revenue)?
- Are any products losing money (negative profit)?
Q3 — Regional Performance¶
- Which region generates the most revenue?
- Which region has the highest profit margin?
- Are there regional differences in what sells?
Q4 — Customer and Segment Analysis¶
- Which customer segment (Consumer, Corporate, Home Office) is most valuable?
- Who are our top 10 customers by revenue?
- What is the repeat purchase rate?
Q5 — Operational Insight¶
- What is the relationship between discount and profit?
- Are we discounting our way to revenue at the expense of profit?
- Which sub-categories have the worst margins?
Success Metrics¶
| Metric | Current State | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Time to produce weekly sales report | 2 hours (manual) | < 5 minutes (auto-refresh) |
| Report freshness | 1 week stale | Daily |
| Self-service access | None (analyst-dependent) | Leadership can self-serve |
| Profit visibility | Revenue only | Revenue AND profit by dimension |
Stakeholders¶
| Stakeholder | Cares about | Needs from the dashboard |
|---|---|---|
| VP of Sales | Overall performance, rep coaching | Revenue trend, regional/rep breakdown |
| CFO | Profit, not just revenue | Margin by category, discount impact |
| Regional Managers | Their region's numbers | Filtered view of their region |
| Product Team | What sells | Category and product performance |