MicroStrategy

Would you start a company with a blindfold on? I know I wouldn't. Most companies today aren't aware of the new ways of keeping track of their company and overall progress its been making. Fortunately, with the help of MicroStrategy, finding out the total Sales Revenue, Units, and other business questions are made easier with this site.

We decided to take a deeper look into MicroStrategy and see what business owners can discover with this site. We wanted to take on the perspective of Retail Sales and came up with five main questions:

1.     Which locations are affected most during the holidays? 

2.     What category sells the most and needs the most units? 

3.     How do we find locations that need more of a specific category? 

4.     What months have least amount of business consistently? 

5.     What categories are being no longer sold as much?

With these questions, the best way to answer them is to look under specific categories. By discovering each question by needs, it made the process much easier to find out what aspects we were looking at. For each question, we understood what category and metrics we needed to look at:

Number one: Month, City, and Item Category. 

Number two: Revenue, Units Available, Units Sold, and Item Category

Number three: Item Category, City and Supplier

Number four: Month, Revenue, and Units Sold

Number five: Units Sold, Item Category, and Supplier

Picking a visualization varied on what exactly we were presenting. If the question had two categories, a simple Bar Graph sufficed. If the question had more than two categories, it made it easier by making three separate graphs in order to get a better understanding. Having a easy layout to get a better idea of how much Revenue the company is making, makes it easier to find areas of improvement and areas in which the company is stronger in. If Alternative Movies is the stronger category and the weakest is Cameras, the company then understands which items might be expected to be phased out and maybe have a sale in order to gain profit once more.

For example, for question two, we made two graphs in order to understand Units Sold and Item Category.

Using MicroStrategy is an excellent way to map out how a company is doing in the span of days, months, and years. Any organization can use the program at ease and have a better idea of how the company is doing in terms of growth and prosperity. It also helps with shipping items and knowing what time of the year a company may need more of a certain product so that way in future years, they'll know how many units and staff they'll need in order to operate at ease. We strongly recommend this site to small business owners in building their company and guiding themselves to a successful path.

Written by: Michael Koprich, Lilian Xavier, Dorian Toribio, and Rebecca Mcphee