An executive KPI dashboard answering: where is growth coming from, which product lines destroy margin, and which customers matter most. KPI banner, regional YoY trends, a state-level sales map, sub-category profitability, and top customers by lifetime profit — one screen, decision-ready.
The business questions
Most student dashboards show everything the data contains. I designed this one the way a business would commission it — starting from the decisions it needs to support:
- Where is growth coming from? → Regional sales trends with year-over-year growth rates, plus a state-level sales map to localize momentum.
- What sells well but destroys profit? → Profit by sub-category, exposing lines with strong revenue and negative margin — the classic retail trap where discounting quietly erases profitability.
- Which customers actually matter? → Top customers ranked by lifetime profit (not revenue), the right lens for retention and account priorities.
Design decisions
- KPI banner first: total sales, total profit, profit margin, and customer count as big-number tiles — the 5-second read before any exploration.
- YoY growth over raw trend lines: executives compare against last year, not against zero. Framing regions by growth rate changes which ones look like problems.
- Profit, not revenue, as the sort key: both the sub-category and customer views rank on profit, because revenue-ranked views hide exactly the insights that matter.
- One screen: everything answers from a single dashboard view — no tab-hunting in a leadership meeting.
Live Tableau work: sales-pipeline funnel chart
Interact with a build from Tableau's Workout Wednesday community challenge (2023 Week 5) — a sales-pipeline funnel tracking opportunity value and conversion through pipeline stages. Funnel charts are deceptively hard in Tableau; this one is a from-scratch build, live below.
Open the viz full-size on Tableau Public ↗
Insights the dashboard surfaces
- Several sub-categories with healthy sales volume run at negative margin — candidates for pricing or discounting changes rather than more promotion.
- Regional YoY view separates markets that are big from markets that are growing — a distinction a raw sales map hides.
- A small set of customers accounts for a disproportionate share of lifetime profit, arguing for a retention program targeted by profitability.
Why this matters for marketing analytics roles
The same discipline transfers directly to marketing: campaign dashboards should rank on contribution, not spend; channel views should show growth against comparable periods; and every chart should map to a budget decision someone can actually make. This is how I approached reporting at The Rugs Story and SixSails, too.