QlikView Your Business

Chapter 3 Defining a Business Scenario for Sales Analysis

The metric of sales is one of the most important measurements when evaluating the performance and prospects for success for a business. The growth, profitability, and cash flow of your company rely on the level of sales, and margin on those sales, you can achieve. Understanding the value you receive for the sale—the price someone pays you—is critical to making decisions related to product development, supply chain, working capital investments, and so on. The value you receive affects virtually all aspects of your business.

Many businesses believe that they know the value they are receiving for their products and that that price is essentially their price list. There are, however, decisions made every day that affect the value they actually receive. Those decisions can be in the form of customer programs such as co-op advertising, volume discounts, seasonal discounts, markdowns, and so on. They can also take the form of product promotional discounts, damage allowances, and so on. The effect of each of these decisions can result in different transactions in different parts of your ERP/financial reporting systems. These decisions are drivers of sales and margins in your business. Quantifying and understanding these drivers are part of advanced sales analysis beyond the one line on your financial statement labeled “Sales.”

In this chapter, we describe the common characteristics of an advanced sales analysis that can allow ...