| Trends are a key metric in
sales. They require
period to period calculations. It's not unusual to get questions like these. How
did we do against last quarter? Against the same quarter a year
ago? Being able to answer them quickly and easily is
important. Here's a simple report. Can the product you are looking at do it from the
data as it is. Remember no DBA building new tables and no 3GL code.
| Product Line Sales for Current Quarter |
| Product Line |
Unit Sales |
% Change from Last Qtr |
| Product A |
100,000 |
10% |
| Product B |
125,000 |
-2% |
| Product C |
135,000 |
15% |
|
Here's a little twist can you use the same code to provide a report with whatever
the user wants - units, dollar volume, or margin?
How about color coding the % change based on the value?
Can you do a drill down from the products?
How much effort is it going to be to turn this into a graph, a PDF file,
or an Excel
worksheet? |
