Management and Customer Analysis Exercise

Overview

According to David McCandless in his TED Talk, The Beauty of Data Visualization, "visualizing information, so that we can see the patterns and connections that matter and then designing that information so it makes more sense, or it tells a story, or allows us to focus only on the information that's important.

Failing that, visualized information can just look really cool."

In this exercise, you will explore one tool for data visualization, QlikView.

Assignment

This assignment is broken into three parts:

In Part I, you will view three short videos to introduce you to the software.

Part II is a guided exercise to walk you through the process of using QlikView to answer data-driven questions.

In Part III, you will use QlikView to search for answers to business questions on your own.

For Parts II and III, you are provided form fields to type in your answers for submission.

Part I: All about QlikView

Begin by watch the following videos to familiarize yourself with QlikView:

QlikView Product Tour: Provides a general overview of how QlikView uses data in business intelligence settings.

New to QlikView: Introduction to QlikView

Ways to Ask Questions With QlikView

The next two parts of the exercise give you a chance to experience how QlikView works. To complete the exercises, access the Sales Management and Customer Analysis demo app on Qlik's website.

Part II: Guided Example

Part II is a step-by-step guided example of how to select data to drill down into increasingly specific parts of the data. If, at any time, you feel you have made an incorrect selection, use the < [Back] or Clear Selections buttons to remove the last or all of the criteria that you have selected. Alternatively, the Eraser option can remove specific, individual criteria at any time.

How many products in which two categories have a profit margin % greater than 60%?

Select the Product tab

Click and drag over the data points near 60% on the graph

Repeat step b until only the points above 60% are selected

Which three road bike models had a profit margin % greater than 25%?

Clear selections

Select Bikes in the Product Category Selection area or by clicking the category in the pie chart

Drag over the points that are above 25%

How many customers in France between the ages of 45 and 50 bought one of these models?

Select Customer tab

Narrow your search by clicking France in the Country selection box

Change the Set Age Range slider to 5 years

Identify the 47-year-old customer who purchased one of these models. What is her name, and which model did she buy?

Change Set Age Range slider to 1 year

Select the bar for 47 <= Age <= 48

Note the customer's age and click it

Move to the Orders tab and expand the Sales Order ID and ShipDate to identify the model she purchased

What other products has this customer purchased?

In the Current Selections box, click the eraser icon to remove the bike categories [Note: This should leave three criteria: Customer, BirthDate, Country]

Identify the two other products she has purchased [Note: These other products were purchased in a different order]

Part III: Individual Exercise

In Part III, you will explore the demo app to answer questions on your own. After completing the Canadian Customer Exploration (Questions 1-4), select the Clear Selections button to start a new exploration.

Canadian Customer Exploration

Which Canadian company spent the highest dollar value on bike racks over the past three years (2011-2013)?

What was the quantity of the largest bike rack purchase (in a single order)?

How much did they spend on the entire order in which they made this purchase?

How much did they spend on bikes in this order?

Identifying Profit Margin %

Which product had the smallest profit margin %?

Which country had the highest profit margin % for the product in Question 5?

Which store in this country had the highest $ Sales for this product?

What was the highest grossing (Total Sales) product for this store?