Example - Look for a Trend in Order Method Revenues

You are a business analyst at the Great 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 8. For more information, see the IBM Cognos 8 Administration and Security Guide.

Steps

1. Open the Order Methods Revenue analysis .

2. In the crosstab, select Order Method.

3. Click the sort button  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.

   

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

5. Click the chart button  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.

   

7. Save the analysis. In the Name box, type

   Order Methods Trend

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

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