Analyzing competition is one of the key aspects of running a business. In this article, learn how to use Excel’s scatter plots to understand competition.
Recently, Kaiser at Junk Charts pointed to a very effective business chart that shows the dynamics of competitive land scape with ease.
The chart shown aside originally appeared in Asymco, shows how mobile handset market has changed between 2007 & 2010.
What is so special about this chart?
I like this type of chart because it clearly tells the story of what happened in mobile handset market between 2007 and 2010. It shows how then leader, Nokia, kept loosing profit share despite a tiny loss in market share. It shows how new entrants like Apple have eroded the profit share for others. [related: good charts tell stories]
The chart instantly lets me ask important questions like, “So what did Nokia do wrong?”, “How come RIM is also in the same league as Apple (ie both market share and profit share went up) ?” etc. and explore for answers.
And that is what a chart should do. It should present a story and poke our curiosity to ask questions (or address problems).
How to construct similar chart in Excel?
Here is how you can construct similar business chart in excel.
Step 1: Get your data
In case of analytical charts like this, getting correct data is all important. For the sake of example, we will use the same variables – Market Share & Profit Share for 4 fictitious products – A,B,C & D. The data is shown below:
Step 2: Re-arrange the data, so we get first and last values
This is very simple. Use cell references to extract the data for just first and last periods. Now make starting values as zero and calculate ending values. Something like this:
Step 3: Make a scatter plot
Select the data and make a scatter plot. When you are done, it should look something like this:
Step 4: Format the chart
Do the following to format the chart:
- Add lines to scatter plot so that starting and end point are connected
- Set arrow symbol as the end-point style for these lines (new feature in Excel 2007 and above)
- Remove grid lines and legend
- Add data labels to either starting or end points alone.
- Add axis labels, position them accordingly
- Make axis and labels subtle.
- Add a descriptive chart title
And you are done. The chart should look something like this:
Bonus Step: Making a scatter plot of absolute values
As you can see, the above chart only shows changes in market share and profit share of products between Q1-2008 and Q2-2010. But a more descriptive option would be to show absolute position of each product at both times.
Like this:
To make this chart, all the steps are same as above, just change your data to starting and end points, not the calculated ones.
Download Competition Analysis Chart Templates:
I have prepared a simple excel chart template to help you create similar charts on your own. Click below links to download.
You can see the chart construction steps in the downloaded workbook.
What do you think about this chart?
As I mentioned I really liked how this chart lays out the dynamics of market place without complicating or animating anything. I think it is both simple and elegant [related: keep your charts simple]
What do you think? Please share your opinion and ideas thru comments. Also, tell us how you would have plotted same data?
More Excel Charts for Analysis:
Excel charts are powerful visual tools for analysis and exploration. We have posted several useful chart templates & ideas on chandoo.org. Please visit these pages for more resources on charting & analytics.
12 Responses to “29 Excel Formula Tips for all Occasions [and proof that PHD readers truly rock]”
Some great contributions here.
Gotta love the Friday 13th formula 😀
Great tips from you all! Thanks a lot for sharing! bsamson, particularly you helped me on a terribly annoying task. 🙂
(BTW, Chandoo, it's not exactly "Find if a range is normally distributed" what my suggestion does. It checks if two proportions are statistically different. I probably gave you a bad explanation on twitter, but it'd be probably better if you fix it here... 🙂 )
Great compilation Chandoo
For the "Clean your text before you lookup"
=VLOOKUP(CLEAN(TRIM(E20)),F5:G18,2,0)
I would like to share a method to convert a number-stored-as-text before you lookup:
=VLOOKUP(E20+0,F5:G18,2,0)
@Peder, yeah, I loved that formula
@Aires: Sorry, I misunderstood your formula. Corrected the heading now.
@John.. that is a cool tip.
Hey Chandoo,
That p-value formula is really great for a statistics person like me.
What a p-value essentially is, is the probability that the results obtained from a statistical test aren't valid. So for example, if my p value is .05, there's a 5% probability that my results are wrong.
You can play with this if you install the Data Analysis Toolpak (which will perform some statistical tests for you AND provide the P Value.)
Let's say for example I've got two weeks of data (separated into columns) with the number of hours worked per day. I want to find out if the total number of hours I worked in week two were really all the different than week one.
Week1 Week2
10 11
12 9
9 10
7 8
5 8
Go to Data > Data Analysis > T-Test Assuming Unequal Variances > OK
In the Variable 1 Box, select the range of data for week 1.
In the Variable 2 Box, select the range of data for week 2.
Check "Labels"
In the Alpha box, select a value (in percentage terms) for how tolerant you are of error.
.05 is the general standard; that is to say I am willing to accept a 95% level of confidence that my result is accuarate.
Select a range output.
Excel calculates a number of results: Average (mean) for each week's data, etc.
You'll notice however that there are two P Values; one-tail and two-tail. (one tail tests are for > or .05), the number of hours I worked in week two is statistically equivalent to the number of hours I worked in week one.
So here’s a way you might want to use this. You put up a new entry on your blog. You think it’s the best entry ever! So you pull your webstats for this week and compare it to last week. You gather data for each week on the length of time a visitor spends on your website. The question you’re trying to prove statistically is whether there’s an average increase in the amount of time spent on your website this week as compared to last week (as a result of your fancy new blog post). You can run the same statistical test I illustrated above to find out. Incidentally, it matters very little to the stat test whether the quantity of visitors differs or not.
Anyhow, the Data Analysis toolpack doesn't perform a lot of stat tests that folks like me would like to have access to. In those cases I have to either use different software, or write some very complicated mathematical formulas. Having this p-value formula makes my life a LOT easier!
Thanks!
Eric~
Fantastic stuf..One line explanation is cool.
Thanks to all the contributors
OS
Take FirstName, MI, LastName in access (you can fix it to work in excel) capitalize first letter of each and lowercase the rest and add ". " if MI exists then same for last name:
Full Name: Format(Left([FirstName],1),">") & Format(Right([FirstName]),Len([FirstName])-1),"") & ". ","") & Format(Left([LastName],1),">") & Format(Right([LastName],Len([LastName])-1),"<")
I teach excel, access, etc etc for a living and i have my access students build this formula one step at a time from the inside out to show how formulas can be made even if it looks complicated. Yes I know I could just do IsNull([MI]) and reverse the order in the Iif() function but the point here is to nest as many functions as possible one by one (also I illustrate how it will fail without the Not() as it is)
Extract the month from a date
The easiest formula for this is =MONTH(a1)
It will return a 1 for January, 2 for February etc.
if in a column we write the value of total person for eg. 10 if we spent 1.33 paise each person then how we get total amount in next column and the result will in round form plzzzzz solve my problem sir................... thank u
@Anjali
If the value 10 is in B2 and 1.33 paise is in C2 the formula in D2 could be =B2*C2
If the values are a column of values you can copy the formula down by copy/paste or drag the small black handle at the bottom right corner of cell D2
kindly share with me new forumulas.
How to convert a figure like 870.70 into 870 but 871.70 into 880 using excel formula ? Please help.