Example - Look for a Trend in Order Method Revenues

You are a business analyst at the Sample Outdoors Company, which sells sporting equipment. You are asked to analyze the consequences of discontinuing the fax and mail order methods, which are expensive to process.

You want to see if revenues for these methods are growing or declining.

Before you can try this example, you must set up the sample packages that come with IBM® Cognos® Business Intelligence. For more information, see the IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Administration and Security Guide.

Procedure

  1. Open the Order Methods Revenue analysis.
  2. In the crosstab, select Order Method.
  3. Click the sort button sort icon on the toolbar, and then click Sort by values, Descending.

    You can see that mail and fax orders are not major contributors to sales. Now you want to see if the trend of mail and fax orders is increasing or decreasing over time.

  4. Drag Time from the Time folder and replace Retailers.
    An example of an analysis of order methods sorted by revenue to detect a trend.

    You want to visually emphasize the revenue trend, so you create a chart.

  5. Click the chart button chart icon on the toolbar.
  6. Click Column chart, standard.

    You can see that the rate of growth for the mail and fax order methods is unsatisfactory compared to other methods.

    A chart of an analysis of order methods sorted by revenue to detect a trend.
  7. Save the analysis. In the Name box, type

    Order Methods Trend

  8. Leave the default destination folder as Public Folders, and click OK.

Results

You now have more information for further analysis. For example, you can rank the order methods.

Parent topic: Focusing Your Analysis