In the third session of Chandoo.org podcast, we are going to get BI curious. 😉
Not that kind you silly, We are talking about Business Intelligence, Big Data, Power Pivot & other Power BI family members.
First some good news: We hit #1 on iTunes in our category
That is right. Around 14th of March, we hit #1 in our category of podcasts. Yay!!!
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What is in this session?
In this session, I am happy to feature Mike Alexander – Microsoft MVP, Author, Blogger & a good friend. Mike talks about how Excel is shaping the BI (Business Intelligence) revolution with advent of Power BI functionality.
- 10% discount on Mike & Bill’s upcoming Power BI Bootcamp in USA
- Free Excel Dashboard Tools add-in
Listen to the podcast to know how to get these.
You will learn,
- Introduction, what Mike is up to these days?
- What is BI, what does it mean to an average Excel analyst?
- What BI capabilities Excel has – brief intro to each of them
- Power Pivot & what it does
- Power Query & why it is important
- Power View & how it works (and where it sucks)
- Power Maps
- How to learn about these new technologies
- Recommended Books
- Websites
- Courses
- Live classes
- Special gift for our listeners
Go ahead and listen to the show.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Links & Resources mentioned in this session:
Mike’s website – Data Pig Technologies
Books mentioned
- Microsoft BI Tools for Excel Analysts by Mike, Jared & Bernard
- 101 Ready to use Excel Macros by Mike Alexander
- Excel Dashboards & Reports by Mike Alexander
- Power Pivot for the Data Analyst by Bill Jelen
- DAX Formulas for Power Pivot by Rob Collie
- Power Pivot Alchemy by Rob Collie & Bill Jelen
- Author profiles of Chris Webb & Mike Alexander
Power Pivot related articles & resources
- Why Excel shines & where it falls compared to other BI tools [PowerPivotPro.com]
- Introduction to Power Pivot & how to use it?
Add-ins mentioned:
- SQL Server Data Mining add-in
- I could not get a link to the segmentation, clustering add-in I used way back in 2006.
Dashboards mentioned:
Courses mentioned:
Mike & Bill’s upcoming Live Class
Transcript of this session:
Click here to download the transcript.
Thanks to Mike
Thanks Mike for joining me and sharing your knowledge, humor and passion with our podcast community. As always, it was fun talking to you. I look forward to featuring you again in our show sometime.
- 10% discount on Mike & Bill’s upcoming Power BI Bootcamp in USA
- Free Excel Dashboard Tools add-in
Listen to the podcast to know how to get these.
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Do you use Excel’s BI capabilities?
Do you use Power Pivot et al? How do you like them? Do you feel these tools empower you & your business? Please share your experiences & thoughts in comments.
13 Responses to “Using pivot tables to find out non performing customers”
To avoid the helper column and the macro, I would transpose the data into the format shown above (Name, Year, Sales). Now I can show more than one year, I can summarize - I can do many more things with it. ASAP Utilities (http://www.asap-utilities.com) has a new experimental feature that can easily transpose the table into the correct format. Much easier in my opinion.
David
Of course with alternative data structure, we can easily setup a slicer based solution so that everything works like clockwork with even less work.
David, I was just about to post the same!
In Contextures site, I remember there's a post on how to do that. Clearly, the way data is layed out on the very beginning is critical to get the best results, and even you may thinkg the original layout is the best way, it is clearly not. And that kind of mistakes are the ones I love ! because it teaches and trains you to avoid them, and how to think on the data structure the next time.
Eventually, you get to that place when you "see" the structure on the moment the client tells you the request, and then, you realized you had an ephiphany, that glorious moment when data is no longer a mistery to you!!!
Rgds,
Chandoo,
If the goal is to see the list of customers who have not business from yearX, I would change the helper column formula to :
=IF(selYear="all",sum(C4:M4),sum(offset(C4:M4,,selyear-2002,1,columns(C4:M4)-selyear+2002)))This formula will sum the sales from Selected Year to 2012.
JMarc
If you are already using a helper column and the combox box runs a macro after it changes, why not just adjust the macro and filter the source data?
Regards
I gotta say, it seems like you are giving 10 answers to 10 questions when your client REALLY wants to know is: "What is the last year "this" customer row had a non-zero Sales QTY?... You're missing the forest for the trees...
Change the helper column to:
=IFERROR(INDEX(tblSales[[#Headers],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],0,MATCH(9.99999999999999E+307,tblSales[[#This Row],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],1)),"NO SALES")
And yes, since I'm matching off of them for value, I would change the headers to straight "2002" instead of "Sales 2002" but you sort the table on the helper column and then and there you can answer all of your questions.
Hi thanks for this. Just can't figure out how you get the combo box to control the pivot table. Can you please advise?
Cheers
@Kevin.. You are welcome. To insert a combo box, go to Developer ribbon > Insert > form controls > combo box.
For more on various form controls and how to use them, please read this: http://chandoo.org/wp/2011/03/30/form-controls/
Thanks Chandoo. But I know how to insert a combobox, I was more referring to how does in control the year in the pivot table? Or is this obvious? I note that if I select the Selected Year from the PivotTable Field List it says "the field has no itens" whereas this would normally allow you to change the year??
Thanks again
worked it out thanks...
when =data!Q2 changes it changes the value in column N:N and then when you do a refreshall the pivottable vlaues get updated
Still not sure why PivotTable Field List says “the field has no itens"?? I created my own pivot table and could not repeat that.
Hi, I put the sales data in range(F5:P19) and added a column D with the title 'Last sales in year'. After that, in column D for each customer, the simple formula
=2000+MATCH(1000000,E5:P5)
will provide the last year in which that particular customer had any sales, which can than easily be managed by autofilter.
Somewhat longer but perhaps a bit more solid (with the column titles in row 4):
=RIGHT(INDEX($F$4:$P$19,1,MATCH(1000000,F5:P5)),4)
[…] Finding non-performing customers using Pivot Tables […]