One good thing about data discovery tools is their agile approach to the data. We can connect any data source and easily slice and dice data. Let's try to use the Pareto principle in order to answer the question: How are sales distributed among the different products?
The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of results come from 20% of the causes. For example, 80% of profits come from 20% of the products offered. This type of analysis is very popular in product analytics.
In MicroStrategy Desktop, we can use shortcut metrics in order to quickly make complex calculations such as running sums or a percent of the total.
Let's build a visualization in order to see the 20% of products that bring us 80% of the money:
- Choose Combo Chart.
- Drag and drop Salesamount to Vertical and Englishproductname to Horizontal.
- Add Orderdate to the filters and restrict to 60 days.
- Right-click on Sales amount and choose Descending Sort.
- Right-click on Salesamount | ShortcutMetrics | Percent Running Total.
- Drag and drop Metric Names to Color By.
- Change the color of Salesamount and Percent Running Total.
- Change the shape of Percent Running Total.
As a result, we get this chart:
From this chart we can quickly understand our top 20% of products which bring us 80% of the revenue.