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Tableau Advance Visuals

Let's explore some advanced visuals in Tableau.

Companies perform Spend Analytics to identify purchasing trends, patterns and thereby find cost-saving opportunities. For this purpose, we have sample procurement data extracted from a company's ERP system.

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This sample Procurement dataset has been first treated in RStudio, to fix the missing values, column formatting and other statistical analysis to measure data quality (Process to be illustrated soon on RStudio page).

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The final dataset has 29 columns and 1,51,412 rows. 

Performing Spend Analysis in an Excel worksheet on such massive file's time-consuming and also occupies a lot of space in your system. However, it is easy and quick to explore with Tableau.

SpendAnalyticsfile..JPG

Procurement Data Structure

There are 5 Organisation Sub-units.

The materials that these 5 organisations spend on are classified under Material Type, as per their purpose, with Material Groups as its sub-group.

Material Type(MTyp)

Material Group
(Matl Group)

Material Codes
(Material)

1. Dashboard : Basic Visuals

From the below Dashboard we can see that spending increased from Aug 2018 to April 2019.

During this Focused Period:

Company code(CoCd) 7860 & 9000 has spend heavily.

Material Type(M Typ) ZROH & YROH were high in demand across CoCd 7860 & 9000. It occupies the 80% of the total cost of procurement.

Click to explore published Dashboard

SA_D1.JPG

2. Side-by-Sode bar plot

As per the visualisation in Dashboard 1, we further narrowed down our research criteria as below during the focused period:

CoCd - 7860 & 9000

MTyp - ZROH & YROH

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The below plot reflects the cost spread for 2 Material Types - YROH & ZROH during the focus period.

We can see that the Average spend on material type YROH was higher than ZROH from Aug'18 to Sep'18. This was gradually interchanged from Oct'18 onwards and ZROH had the highest Avg. cost in April'19.

MType.Tableau.png

3. Dual Axis plot : Bar Plot + Line Chart

Dual-axis plots are helpful in getting the comparative view of 2 continuous values in the same visual.

Research criterias are freezed as below (use Apply to worksheet option from filter dropdown) :

Focused Period - Aug'18 to Apr'19

CoCd - 7860 & 9000

MTyp - ZROH & YROH

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In the below visual, the % Gross Value (total cost) of Material Groups are presented as a Bar plot and the % total PO Quantity (Material Demand) is reflecting in the form of a Line chart.

I have made few alterations like highlighted the Material Group in bold, plot labelling via Tooltip & enabled caption.

Note: Tableau can also generate relevant captions as per the visual contents. It is customisable too.

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From the below plot we can further restrict our analysis for Material Group 1500, 2003 & 2211 which is more than 90% of the Total Cost. These materials groups seem to have considerably high costs.

Material Group 1500 have the highest % Total cost & Order quantity.

On the Other hand Material group 2003 seem to have comparatively high cost but order quantity is extremely low.

material Group 2211 have high % order quantity but the cost is relatively low.

Dual axis Tableau.png

4. Area Chart

Area Chart is similar to Line chart and is most suitable to study the trend of continuous values over a period of time.

Drag the respective values in the Columns and rows field and select Area Chart either from 'Marks' section at the left side of the page or select it from the 'Show me' option at the top right corner of the page. I have removed the filters and colour cards from the right side of the page to create more space for the visuals.

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The below Area plot reflects the cost spread of the respective material group across the focused period.

Cost for Material Group 1500 incurred Oct'18 onwards and was highest in Jan'19.

Material Group 2003 and 2211 was high in Nov'18 -Dec'18 and stopped after Mar'19.

Similarly, the plot reflects the cost spread of other material groups during the focus period(with less % cost as per the previous plot). 

Area_Chart.Tableau.png

5. Comparative Bar Plot : % Gross Value and % PO Quantity with Material Group & Unit Weightage.

From the below plot we can see that :

  1. Material Group 1500 have the highest cost, around 70% of the total cost,  and all orders are in KGs.

  2. Material Group 2003 ranks 2nd on the % total cost with fewer order quantities but all are in TO (Tons). This explains the high cost in spite of Order quantity being low (From the previous Dual Axist plot)

  3. Material Group 2211 have a contribution of 11.16% to total cost and order weights are KGs or L. Major orders in this group are in KGs.

I have used colour progression for Order quantity across unit weights. We can scroll the plot to the right to view further Material groups and relevant Unit weight. 

Comparative_plot.Tableau.png

4. Transposed Bar Plot

The below Bar plot view was created for a comparative view of the  Material Codes listed in each material Group and % contribution to the total cost. As per our observation in previous visuals, we will restrict our analysis to high costing Material Group 2003, 1500 & 2211. You can scroll down to view the % cost contribution of each material code. 

We can see that there are only 5 materials grouped under 2003 with unit weight value Tons.

Material group 1500 have a large number of materials and all have unit weigh as KGs.

Material Group 2211 have Materials with unit weights KG and L. Major cost is incurred on KG Orders.

Category_Grouping.Tableau.png

4. Dashboard : Advance Visual

Le's draft our 2nd Dashboard that reflects the cost and order quantity spread of the respective Material Group, related unit weight and Material codes listed in the respective Material group.

The Dashboard also has filters to :

  1. Alter the Material Type, by default it is selected for YROH & ZROH.

  2. Date filter on MMM-YY basis, by default it is selected from Aug'18 to Aor'19.

The tooltip in the Dual-axis plot is kept as it is in Dashboard too, just to bring the viewer's focus on the respective Material Group with high % cost.​

Click to explore the Interactive Dashboard published in the Tableau portal.

Tableau Dashboard2.png

The below Procurement Tracking Dashboard can be usefull in keeping a track of companies spend across all organisational units along with variety of Materials and order quanitities for a perticular period.

This summaries all our observations till now.

If you have any queries or further suggestions, mention in the comments section below or in the chatbox. - Thank you.

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