In the previous post, I analyzed the SuperStore data set under the angle of the sequence of Products purchased. In this post, we will adopt a different angle: the sequence of Orders.
Taking the same data source with this level of transaction details:
This time, I will collapse the products related dimensions to focus on when the orders took place for each customer and ignore the product details of the orders:
The quantity and Discount for each product are different, therefore the collapse version of the data set will discard those indicators as well. The number of rows will therefore shrink by roughly half, since we determined in the previous post that each order has 2 products on average, see bottom graph:
An easy way to prepare the data is by using Alteryx and its specialized tools:
It’s pretty much the same workflow as in the previous post, with a couple of variations:
- addition of a Summarize tool, grouping by Order ID:
- The Tile tool is using only the Customer ID:
- Addition of a Multi-Row Formula tool to ease the computation of days between Orders:
And in the resulting table, as expected, each Order has a unique row:
And additionally, we now see how many days took place between 2 orders of the same customer.
Which additional fresh insights are we getting in Tableau?
We can now easily plot the timeline of orders for a specific customer:
You could hyperlink the Order ID to your CRM system, as indicated in this previous post.
We can also now run statistics on how long it takes between orders broken down by Segments:
Where the top number indicates how many customers and the $ figure the average order amount. For illustration: 359 Consumer customers have placed at least 4 orders, and their 4th was worth on average $510 and took place 186 days after the 3rd order. On average, Consumer Customers take 106 days between orders, which is less than Corporate and Home Office customers who take 135 days between orders. Ordering more or less frequently with lesser amounts could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who bears the cost of preparing the order.
The Alteryx workflow can be downloaded from this link: SuperStore Sequence 2.
The Tableau workbook is available from Tableau Public:
