Digital dashboard in a Data Mining application

DATASET 3 – SALES DATA in Google Looker

Author: EXY21160, EXY21156

Cohort: 29Y
Unit: Information and Big Data Management

February 2023
Executive summary

The businesses that didn’t start or don’t have the plan to transform their
business into a data-driven business might be already late and lose the
competitive advantage that data can offer. Transformation of the business
from regular to data-driven is a long and frequently costly process, but it is a
justified investment. Digital dashboards are the last link in the data-driven
business chain, unlocking the value of the business data. They represent the
eyes of a business through which current and future performance can be seen.
This paper highlights the importance of data-driven processes and the
usage of digital dashboards in business. A general overview of big data usage
and digital dashboards in business is provided in the first part of the paper.
The second part contains one example dashboard created in the Google Looker
tool, based on the “DATASET 3 – SALES DATA” data set. Constraints related
to digital dashboards usage and conclusion are provided at the end of the
paper.

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Table of contents

Executive summary ............................................................2

Table of contents ...............................................................3
1. Digital dashboards ......................................................4
1.1 Integration of big data into business ............................................... 4
1.2 Digital dashboards creation ............................................................ 8
1.3 Importance of digital dashboards and examples ............................. 11
2. DATASET 3 – SALES DATA dashboard ........................ 12
2.1 Yearly sales trends ..................................................................... 12
2.2 Monthly split .............................................................................. 13
2.3 Products drill-down ..................................................................... 16
2.4 Regions ..................................................................................... 19
3. Constraints on big data usage ................................... 22
4. Conclusion ................................................................. 23
References ....................................................................... 25
Appendix.......................................................................... 28

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 1. Digital dashboards

Companies have at their disposal a large amount of information about

their customers, sales performance, business processes performance and
other important performance indicators of their business. In the majority of
cases, that information is stored in different places, in different formats, and
it cannot be correlated to create some added value. It is a consequence of the
fact that different systems collect the information in the company, by purpose
or coincidentally, through different business processes. Nevertheless, a huge
amount of information is there, ready to be used, and that’s what is called big
data.

Data needs to be processed, transformed and correlated in order to get

valuable information out of it. The usage of various tools for data post-
processing can do that. The result is visualized through different charts,
graphs and tables as a part of digital dashboards, which are then used to
track, analyze and report different business metrics. Digital dashboards are
powerful tools that help create business value from the available data. They
are usually created for different business segments like sales, human
resources, marketing, IT, finance and others.

1.1 Integration of big data into business

Victor Martin et al. (2017) investigated Capgemini’s seven principles of

big data integration and incorporation into business (Figure 1.1.). They
suggest that each new introduction of big data into business should go through
seven steps proposed by Capgemini Insights & Data.

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 The first step is an objective that needs to be achieved with the new
data analysis and process introduction. McKinsey & Company, in their reports
about big data introduction for industrial companies, also see it as the first
step definition of the clear objective that needs to be covered and to which
users of digital data and digital dashboards must provide.

Figure 1.1. Capgemini’s seven steps of big data integration

(source: https://www.capgemini.com )

The second step is the IT infrastructure and digital platforms that need
to support digitalization. Collecting the data is not a challenge as deriving
some valuable insights from it (Kantaria, 2019). Big data is generated almost
by itself as a result of some digital activities as a part of business processes.
Since the amounts of generated data are large, the first thing to take care of
is where to store it. As Patel (2019) recommended, the main choice for data
storage should be a data lake, a single point where all available data is stored.
That will later ease the process of data consolidation and integration. There
are several types of clouds depending on location and ownership, such as
private clouds, public clouds, hybrid clouds and others. In public clouds, IT
infrastructure is not owned by the end user. The largest public cloud providers

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are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Alibaba
(Figure 1.2.)

Figure 1.2. The biggest public cloud providers Q32022

(source: https://www.statista.com)

When appropriate infrastructure is available, data must be extracted

from a source, transformed and loaded into the data lake. This is called the
ETL process (Extract, Transform and Load). Some of the tools for data
integration are Spark (Apache), MapReduce (Hadoop), Powercenter
(Informatica), Oracle Dat Integrator (Oracle), and SQL Server Integration
Service (Microsoft).

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 As soon as data is in place, the security and privacy of the data must be
ensured, as well as proper data processing. This is the third step within
Capgemini’s seven steps of big data integration. Many authors in their work
emphasize the importance of data governance. According to Leonelli (2019),
data quality and information that can be extracted later on is highly
dependable on how good the data collection, management and processing
strategy is. Good data governance can directly influence a company’s
innovation capability. Better data governance leads to a higher innovation
capability of a company (Mikalef et al., 2020).

The fourth step is to redesign processes and business models to a data-

driven process. Process redesign must be a comprehensive transformation
and cannot be done as a small short-term project, emphasizes Berndtsson et
al. (2020). According to the same source, many organizations that started
digital transformation partially as a pilot project ended up with a failure.
Investigations of Agyei-Owusu et al. (2021) found a positive effect of data-
driven culture on the performance outcomes of the different processes within
a company, leading to better customer satisfaction in the end.

Steps five and six in Capgemini’s seven steps of big data integration are
related to data analytics, unleashing the data potential and creating added
value out of it. Haan et al. (2023) provides a list of the best data analytics
tools for businesses, including Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Qlik Sense,
Looker, Klipfolio, Zoho Analytics and Domo. Other popular tools that didn’t
appear on Haan et al. (2023) list are R, Python, SAS, Excel, Talend and similar.
Advancement of data analytics tools and machine learning algorithms created
the potential of making digital twins – representations of the object from real
life in a digital world. A digital twin is nothing but a computer program that is
able to simulate and predict the behaviour of an object from the real world
based on real-world data. Singh et al. (2021) highlight the big potential that

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digital twins provide for the simulation of future developments and new
applications of existing products.

The last step in data integration into a business process is to empower

employees to use it and derive new business ideas from it. According to Leyer
et al. (2019), big data should not stay only a concept, but managers need to
empower employees to integrate big data into daily business activities. To
make a whole out of everything and ease usage, data must be presented in a
proper way through digital dashboards. A Digital dashboard is a screen or
page that contains the most important information related to a certain activity
and is derived from big data.

1.2 Digital dashboards creation

While making a digital dashboard, it should be kept in mind who the

final users of the dashboard are, what users want to see or track and why that
information is important. The dashboard must be simple, elegant, and easy to
use, and most important - users must be able to quickly identify important
information. Recommendations on building a good digital dashboard can be
found on the websites of companies offering software tools or DaaS (Data as
a Service), like Digital Balance, Qlik, Net Solutions, Databox and similar.

There is no strict division by type of dashboard depending on what they

show, but here is a short description of the three types that appear most often.
These three types are strategic, operational and analytical dashboards (Figure
1.3.). Strategic dashboards are used to track the company’s long-term
strategy development and analyze the key strategy indicators. Operational
dashboards are used to monitor operations and a short time goals. Analytical
dashboards are dashboards with the largest amount of data. They offer a

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wider overview of almost all important company metrics and help executives
to create strategic decisions. The final look of a dashboard also depends on
the sector, team, or job position is built for.

Figure 1.3. The types of digital dashboards

(source: https://www.netsolutions.com )

Besides data behind the dashboard, visual effects and used visual data
elements are also of great importance. Pie Charts, Bar Charts, Graphs, Tables
and Line Charts are the most commonly used and easiest to understand. A
dashboard is, in the end, the group of different objects on the same page or
screen. The results of different psychological researches on how an observer
perceives complex scenes cosome of the dashboard creators use complex
scenes composed of many groups of objects on some backgroundhologists
introduced the Gestalt Principles early in the twentieth century. It is a theory
of how observer groups and connect certain objects from a surface depending
on their representation (Figure 1.4.).

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 Last but not least, it is recommended that dashboards are interactive
but with a limited number of variable parameters. Nadj et al. (2020) found in
their research that too many interactive elements on the dashboard can have
an adverse effect and decrease the user’s situation awareness. Digital
dashboards should be convenient for different types of access like from PC,
tablet or mobile.

Figure 1.4. The Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception

(source: https://www.netsolutions.com )

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1.3 Importance of digital dashboards and examples

Digital dashboards are the ones unlocking the value of business data.
Without good data presentation and visualization, it is very hard or not
possible at all to leverage the huge amounts of data companies have.

Each company and each department and team of the company need a
place where it is possible to track their performance indicators on a daily,
weekly, monthly or yearly basis. Digital dashboards ease the way performance
is tracked and can be created for any industry, sector, department, team or
even for tracking individual performance. Proper use of available data and
digital dashboards introduction is improving business performance and puts
additional control on it. Jing et al. (2019) investigated how much the
introduction of geospatial digital dashboards improved smart city performance
monitoring. Their finding is that such dashboards are powerful knowledge
communications tools that can help significantly improve the quality of
monitoring and bring added value by enabling to track urban sustainability
goals better.

Digital dashboards are the last point in data-driven business to complete

the cycle of data collection, analysis, and value extraction. They are necessary
to read the available information and make correct short-term and long-term
business decisions.

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 2. DATASET 3 – SALES DATA dashboard

DATASET 3 – SALES DATA is a set of data about sales performance in

different US states during the period between 2014 and 2017. The set contains
20 columns and 9,994 rows of data on a daily level. The data set is used as
an example to show how well-manipulated and analyzed data can be used for
extracting a lot of useful information and making important business
decisions. For data manipulation, the Google Looker software is used.

2.1 Yearly sales trends

The customer base from the provided data set is not too big, and it was
793 different customers in total in the four years timeframe. Even with that
small customer base, total sales were $2.30 Million, and profits earned close
to $287 thousand.

Figure 2.1. Totals for the four years

On a yearly basis, sales dropped in 2015 compared to 2014, but profit

increased steadily through all four years. In the last available year (2017),
profit increased by 14.2% compared to the year before, and it was $94.44
thousand. The year 2015 is interesting for analysis because it is the only year
where the total sales amount dropped, but the profit increased.

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 Throughout the complete period, all available categories of the
products: Technology, Furniture and Office Supplies contributed equally to the
total sales amount (Figure 2.2.). From the profit perspective, it is clearly
visible that the dominant part comes from the Technology and Office Supplies
products because 93.6% of total profit comes from these two categories.

Figure 2.2. Contribution of the product categories

in overall sales and profit

2.2 Monthly split

The monthly split section of the dashboard gives the possibility of

analysis of the profit and sales figures every month. Interestingly for the four
years three months with the highest sales quantities in each year were
September, November and December.

Figure 2.3. Monthly sales quantities in 2017

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 Similar is valid for the months with the lowest sales quantities. In each
year between 2014 and 2017, January and February were two months with
the lowest amount of sales quantities. In the period 2014 – 2016, there was
another part of the year with poor sales performance, and it was in July –
August timeframe. Starting in 2017, the summer months improved, but the
winter low sales window at the beginning of the year kept the spot at the
bottom of the sales list.
A good characteristic of the sales during September is not only the
quantity sold but the profit as well. September was always one of the three
best-ranked months, based on profit, in each year between 2014 and 2017.
From the product category perspective, a stable part of the revenue comes
from office supplies products during September. It was like that for every year
except 2015 (Figure 2.4.).

Figure 2.4. Profit from the office supplies

always high during September

Other months that show up in the top three revenue months in the
2014 to 2016 period are November and December. In March 2017 revenue
increased compared to previous years, and March substituted December in
the top three revenue list. Quantities sold in March were not so high as by the

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end of the year, but despite that, revenue was high. The main drivers for
revenue in March 2017 were products from the technology category. The same
is with November and December throughout all years. Technology products
brought the highest income and pushed those months to the top of the
monthly revenue ranking.

Figure 2.5. The best three revenue months in 2017,

split by category

There were no months with a negative monthly profit in the last two
years of available data (in 2016 and 2017). Total monthly profit was negative
only in two months for the complete period 2014 – 2017, and that was in July
2014 and January 2015. From January 2015 onwards, each month had a
positive total profit monthly value.
In 2017 the best sales on the monthly level were in November, when
total monthly sales were $118.45 thousand, while February was the worst
sales month in that year with $20.3 thousand in total monthly sales. From the
profit perspective, there were no months with overall negative monthly profit,
but there were months with negative profit per product category. In April
2017, negative profit was in the technology products category, while products
from the furniture category appeared with a negative monthly profit in 2017
for four months – January, February, May and October. This is still better than

15
in the previous years when monthly profit was negative in one of the product
categories for five or six months.

Figure 2.6. Monthly sales and profit per product category in 2017,
sorted by sales and profit

2.3 Products drill-down

Insights on the most important and most profitable products can be

found in the products drill-down section of the dashboard. Share in the
quantities sold, share in sales and share in the profit of each product category
is provided. Additionally, drill down in each of the categories up to the single
product level is provided.
The quantity of the products sold increases through the years. In the
four-year period, 37,873 products are sold. The year 2017, as the last year,
was dominant, with 12,476 items sold, giving 33% of items sold in the 2014
– 2017 period. The dominant category from the quantities sold perspective is
the office supplies category. Around 60% of total quantities sold come from
the office supplies category, while furniture and technology cover the rest of
the quantities with almost the same contribution – close to 20%. In 2017,
61.5% of quantities sold were in the office supplies category, bringing 42.5%
of the total profit that year. The other two categories in 2017 had a slightly
16
smaller share than usual – furniture had a contribution of 19.5% in all
quantities, while the contribution of technology products was 18.5% (Figure
2.7.).

Figure 2.7. Share in quantity sold per product category in 2017

Despite the lowest share in the quantities sold, the technology products
category was the highest contributor to overall sales. Still, the difference
between this and the other two categories is not so high, and it goes up to
5%. When the four-years period is observed, three product categories were
all above 30% in contribution to total sales. Technology products were at
36.4%, furniture at 32.3% and office supplies at 31.3%. In 2017, technology
products were at 37.1%, office supplies at 33.6% and furniture at 29.4%.
The smallest contributor to the overall profit is the furniture category.
Products from this category in 2014 contributed to the overall profit by 11%,
and in 2017 contribution of this category was only 3.2% of the total profit. In
2014 the most profitable were products from the office supplies category, but
in each year after 2014, the highest share in profit was on the technology
products side. In 2017, 54.2% of the total profit came from technology
products. March, November and October 2017 were the months with the
highest profit in his category. March 2017 was the most profitable month in
2017, with a profit of $14.75 thousand. In that month, the technology

17
products category contributed 56.8% of total monthly sales, and 74.8% of
profit in that month came from this category.

Figure 2.8. The most profitable products per category in 2017

Canon imageClass 2200 Advanced Copier was the most profitable

product in 2017. Only eleven items sold in 2017 made a profit of $15.7
thousand, which is 17% of the total profit in that year. Second-ranked product
in the 2017 yearly profit and at the same time in the technology product
category was Hewlett Packard LaserJet 3300 Copier, with a profit of $3.6
thousand. The remaining products from the technology category were in range
with profit, with the best-ranked products from the office supplies category.
From the revenue perspective, the best five office supply products brought

18
between $1.3 – $1.9 thousand each to the overall revenue in 2017. High
overall profit from this category comes from the higher quantities sold
compared to other categories.
Pagoda Armless Upholster was the best-ranked furniture product and
the only product from the furniture category that had yearly revenue in 2017
greater than $1,000. All other furniture products had significantly lower
revenues compared to the products from other categories.

2.4 Regions

The aim of the fourth dashboard page is to give insights into

geographical sales distribution. Sales data is presented from the state down
to the city level and can be filtered per year, month and product category.

Figure 2.9. Heat map of states based on

the number of customers in 2017

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 The highest customer base in 2017 was in California, with 291
customers, making it almost 42% of the complete customer base. Close to
87% of the customer base in 2017 was located in California, Texas and New
York states (Figure 2.10.).

Figure 2.10. Customer base and profit in 2017, best states

Washington is the state that was not in the first five in customer base
but took third place in the profit ranking. Michigan and Georgia had
approximately five times fewer customers than New York, but they secured a
place in the top five profitable states in 2017.
The third place for Washington in the profit ranking comes from the fact
that close to 40% of the customers in that state buy products from the
technology category, which is the most profitable category among the three.
For technology products, the highest profit in 2017 was achieved in New York
state, second highest in Washington and third in California.
In 2017, almost complete profit in the state of New York came from New
York City, with a small contribution from eight other cities. More equal profit
distribution per city was in California. Los Angeles and Sun Francisco were

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leading cities, bringing 50% of revenue in 2017 to California, and the rest of
the revenue was equally distributed in other cities there.

Figure 2.11. Ten most profitable cities in 2017

New York City was the most profitable city in 2017, followed by Seattle,
Los Angeles and San Francisco (Figure 2.11.). Chicago, Philadelphia and
Huston were the cities with a large customer base but negative profit during
2017 (Figure 2.12.).

Figure 2.12. Ten worst profitable cities in 2017

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 3. Constraints on big data usage

Data dashboard usage and big data usage, in general, have a lot of
benefits for the business. The introduction and incorporation of digital data
into business processes are challenging and difficult. At the same time,
organizations should be aware of all potential risks that usage of digital data
brings and take care to prevent all potential issues that could appear.

Figure 3.1. The holistic approach to the risk management

(source: McKinsey cyber risk management article )

Using digital data inside an organization and its incorporation into the
organization’s processes is costly, but it is a worthy investment. Although
almost every company has a lot of data on the reach of the hand, that data
is, in the majority of cases, not structured. That’s because data is collected
spontaneously as a collateral product of other processes inside a company.
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Then, data from the different systems need to be correlated, leading to the
second important thing after structured data for digital data usage –
appropriate platforms, tools, storage and connectivity for the data
combination and presentation. In the end, the right data can bring additional
value to the business only if it is understood and used in the proper way,
meaning that people in the organization must be educated on big data.
As soon as the data is in use, an organization must think about data
backup, data recovery and data security. Good data governance is mandatory
for companies that use digital data. Data must be anonymized to be compliant
with the regulation rules. A strict access and data management policy must
be in place to prevent data leakage and possible security traits. Security policy
must take into account all parts of the organization that are somehow involved
in the data usage process and cover all the risks that each part brings (Figure
3.1.).

4. Conclusion

Data-driven business is the future of any business, irrelevant to which

industry or sector it belongs. Transformation from regular to data-driven
business is a long and frequently costly process, but it is worth investment.

A lot of useful insights and trends can be derived even with a relatively
small amount of data, like DATASET 3 – SALES DATA from this paper. The
four-page long dashboard created from this data set revealed insights on
yearly sales, monthly sales, product-related insights and regional sales
insights. And yet, a lot of data from the data set is not processed, waiting to

23
be added to a dashboard and provide additional insights on sales in the 2014
– 2017 period.

Digital dashboards are an inevitable part of business today and can bring
significant performance improvement and competitive advantage when used.
The potential of large quantities of data that companies have is not used to
the full extent or cannot be used at all without proper data analytics and data
interpretation. Focused, easy to read, and with information of interest inside,
digital dashboards are the eyes of a business through which current and future
performance can be seen.

24
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Appendix

DATASET 3 – SALES DATA Dashboard

report link: J&Z_sales dashboard

Page 1 – Yearly sales trends

28
Page 2 – Monthly split

29
Page 3 – Products drill-down

30
Page 4 – Regions

31