This project was done in a retail environment. One way to maximize profitability is to lower the cost of goods sold. The client's distributor offered volume discounts for a variety of products. The volume discounts ranged from 9% to 29% depending on the quantity purchased. The distributor sold over 120 products to the client. Our goal was to determine what volume to purchase per individual…
Dashboards Don’t Replace Your Eyes
by Francisco A. Barillas, Principal, and Senior Consultant The store was selling 25% less than expected in defiance of the demand planning model so carefully implemented in the business. Executives and managers questioned the validity of their dashboards based on their apparent miscalculations. "How could this be?", "Is the data being fed correctly?", "Check the algorithms!!!". I am a strong advocate for data-based decision-making. That…
Optimize Prices to Maximize Profitability and Customer Loyalty
Pricing is an art and a science. There are many factors that a pricing manager factors in to arrive at a price that delivers the most value to the corporation. It is important to refrain from equating "most value" as merely "largest revenue". Value to the corporation is a combination of many things including top and bottom line profitability, improved cash flow, simplification of policies,…
Overcomplicated Dashboard on the Rise
The main objective of a dashboard is to provide actionable insights for decision-makers and people embedded in key processes. The best dashboards are simple, well-structured, and easily consumed by people with different levels of expertise, The most common mistake in the use of dashboards today is overcomplication and misalignment with the strategic or business goals of the company. The purpose of visualization is insight, not…
An Idea is not a plan. A Plan is not action. Action is not results. Results are results.
These are lessons-learned helpful to any manager and entrepreneur. On my desk there is a wooden pencil box with the following words carved on its sliding cover: “An Idea is Not a Plan”. This is a gift presented to me by one of my direct reports during my transition as the Chief Innovations Officer in charge of implementing the expansion strategy of the business. This…
If your company only rewards firefighting, get used to the heat.
It is ironic to me that the places with the most firefighters are the ones with the most fires. “Why ironic?”, doesn’t it make sense that more firefighters would be needed where there are more fires? It does, but only to a certain extent. Hopefully, by now you have realized that my “firefighting” remark is used to illustrate a very common phenomenon in many companies.…
Welcome to Vectoral Data Corporation.
An efficient Data Analytics and Visualization analyst is one that combines three equally important factors: Sound business and operational experience extending multiple industries and disciplines. Mathematical and Statistical rigor in their analysisEfficient and effective coding techniques to properly deal with large datasets and data visualizations. Vectoral Data prides itself on cultivating and placing emphasis on all three factors so that we can provide complete and…