Business Analytics - The Worst Use of Excel ever ?

Excel is a great tool and I use it a lot.  It's available on almost every business user's desktop and it's highly extensible (with some sensible design) through add-ins and programming but it can't do everything; push it too far and the results can be nasty.  

Here are my nominations for "The Worst Use of Excel ever" awards.

Recommended Reading: Supply Chain Network Design

I've done a lot of  supply chain network design projects and consider myself to be an expert. Had I had this book from the start, I may have got to expert status a lot faster.

With experience in supply-chain and an academic background that includes mathematical-optimization, when the need arose to build supply chain network optimization models I just did it.  Then I learned many, valuable, real-world lessons the hard way- by getting it wrong.

There are a number of books available that cover this area: I have dipped into a few, as needed, and I have not read most of them so I really can't say this is the best book available on the subject.  I can say this is one of the very few analytic books on any subject that I have read cover to cover.  

Ignore SNAP and your product may not be on the shelf when it's most needed - and that means lost sales.

SNAP is the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” (formerly known as “Food Stamps”) in the United States which puts food on the table for 46 million people every month. 

SNAP can drive big spikes in sales at the store. These spikes are large but short-lived and often pass undetected by reporting and forecasting systems.    

Our whitepaper covers the causes of SNAP spikes, why they vary so much across regions and products, how to identify sales spikes and what you should be doing to maximize sales.

Download it now or visit our website for more information.

Better Business Analytics - 2013 New Year's Resolutions

10 resolutions for Better Business Analytics

Firstly - thank you Santa for reading my Christmas list. I love the T-shirt - "Statistics means never having to say you're certain".  With the holiday season coming to a close my thoughts are turning to the New Year and even a certain excitement about getting back to work.  Time for some new year's resolutions !

Better Point of Sale Reports with Variance Analysis (update)

I've just revised and updated one of the most popular posts on this blog adding more detailed descriptions,  a graphical view to the output and more clearly showing path to action based on these reports.  Follow the link below to the updated post.

Better Point of Sale Reports with "Variance Analysis": Velocity, Distribution and Pricing.. oh my !

Routine, weekly point-of-sale reports tend to look very similar.  For various time buckets (Last week, last 4 weeks, year to date) we total sales in both currency and units then compare to prior year.  Add in a few more measures to look at retail pricing, inventory,  or service level metrics and you may struggle to make it fit on a page.   And from a CPG standpoint, POS  reporting is only half of the story: a CPG's sales targets are not based on POS, they are based on shipments to the retailer.  How can you get a good overview of POS and reconcile that with Shipments all in one report?

Better Business Analytics - Christmas list

It's that time of year again: my kids have written, re-written and re-re-written their Christmas lists now so we all hope Santa will read them carefully and take notice.

With just a few days left before the holiday season hits I wanted to do something a little more fun, so I've pulled together a list of things that I think every Business Analyst should want.  Some are free to acquire, just costing your time to learn, others you may wish to ask Santa (or your CFO) to provide.