Northwind Traders

Executive Summary:

Findings:

• Growth Trends: The company experienced substantial growth, with sales revenue and orders increasing by 56.9% and 45.9%, respectively, compared to the previous year. On-time delivery rates improved from 95.1% to 97.0%.
• Sales Office Performance Discrepancy: The New York office significantly outperformed the London office, contributing 73% of total orders and 72.1% of total revenue. This disparity persists even after adjusting for sales staff numbers and sales leadership influence.
• Product and Pricing Analysis: No significant differences were found in the types of products sold by each office. Both offices sold a similar mix of products across various price categories.
• Discount Strategies: Contrary to expectations, the London office offered higher discounts (6.5%) compared to New York (5.3%), yet still underperformed in revenue and order numbers.

Key Concern:

The performance gap between the New York and London offices is notable, particularly as both have an equal number of employees and service a comparable customer base. The higher discounts offered by London have not translated into higher sales or orders.

Conclusion:

The data does not explain the performance discrepancy between the New York and London offices. Management should investigate this issue further to identify underlying causes and potential solutions.

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Background:

Northwind Traders is a global import and export company specializing in supplying gourmet food products to restaurants, cafes, and other food retailers.

The request is to analyze data covering the period between July 4, 2013, and May 6, 2015, and provide top leadership with a dashboard summarizing overall performance, specifically on the following dimensions:

Sales revenue and order trends over the data period.

Current revenue, orders, and on-time shipping performance placed in context of the prior year (from May 6, 2015).

Top product categories, geographic trends, and sales staff performance.

In addition to the requested deliverables, this analysis identifies a potential issue regarding sales staff performance in the Northwind Traders' London office.

Analysis:

Overall sales and order numbers are growing (revenue and orders are up 56.9% and 45.9% from last year), and the on-time delivery rate is also up from 95.1% to 97.0%. Growth of both orders and sales is part of a steep upward trend beginning in December 2014.

Between the two sales offices of New York and London, 73% of total orders and 72.1% of total revenue come from the New York office, while the split of total customers for each office is 53.6% for New York to 46.4% for London.

The Vice President of Sales reports out of the New York office, but after removing his sales from the analysis, and thereby balancing the number of employees to four for each office, the discrepancy decreases but remains at 69.5% for orders and 67.9% for total orders and revenue coming out of New York (the customer split remains the same).

Two possible explanations for this discrepancy were explored. The first was to check and see if the New York office was selling higher-priced or premium goods. To investigate this possibility, each product was assigned to a price category ranging from "Low Price" for products selling for less than $10 to "Premium Price" for products selling for less than $65. The distributions for each sales office among products sold in these categories are almost identical, meaning New York is not achieving higher revenue by moving more expensive products.

The second explanation explored was whether or not New York was pumping up their orders by offering higher discounts. It turns out the opposite is true, with London offering average discounts of 6.5% to New York's 5.3%.

Conclusion/Key Finding:

The London office is generating less revenue, fewer orders (despite offering higher product discounts on average), and servicing fewer customers than the New York office, all with the same amount of employees. The available data doesn't explain why this is so and should be investigated directly by management to understand the performance discrepancy between the two sales offices.