Maven Northwind Traders Challenge

INTRODUCTION

The project was my attempt at the Maven Analytics Northwind Traders Challenge. The objectives of the challenge can be found here. I kept in mind that the report should be designed for the executive team. For this reason I tried not to give very detailed information. Most of the charts are limited to 5 or 10 top values. On the other hand I was trying to find in data some interesting, actionable insights. That's why I sometimes needed to reach for historical data ( from 2013 until now for product performance scatter plot and shipment bubble chart and for year 2014 for sales trends heat map). All other dashboard parts are only for year 2015.

GAUGES

The main KPI of the report (revenue) was based on an assumption that the company growth percentage between 2014 and 2015 will be similar as revenue growth between 2013 and 2014. Taking this into account we can determine that the goal for 2015 will be easy to remember and iconic $ 1 mln in revenue. In line with this, the order quantity target was calculated. The actual achievement of the goal is compared with the value of the plan times the elapsed time of 2015. After over 4 months the company is heading to its destination without delay. KPIs are accompanied be an average deal size metric and a revenue column chart by completed months.

PRODUCT PERFORMANCE

I was interested how many times on average customers reapeted their purchase and what was the number of customers. Showing this in the scatterplot with constant average lines divided the products in 4 groups. According to them some insight and tips where provided.

INTERACTIVITY

Nearly every visual on a dashboard has some interaction with others. They filter each other, giving the user a chance to dig deeper into the data. I only disabled some interactions in cases where filtering was not working properly due to differences in years in individual visuals. For example, you cannot filter the revenue gauge that is set to 2015 with a 2014 based heatmap.