Why structured data enables analysis in Excel - Business Case Study

Scenario Mode

👤 Your Role: You are a sales analyst at a retail company.

📋 Request: Your manager wants you to analyze monthly sales data to find trends and identify the best-selling products.

📊 Data: You have a table with sales records including Date, Product Name, Region, Units Sold, and Sales Amount.

🎯 Deliverable: Create a clean, structured table and use formulas to summarize total sales by product and by month.

Sample Data

Date	Product Name	Region	Units Sold	Sales Amount
2024-01-05	Notebook	East	10	200
2024-01-15	Pen	West	25	50
2024-02-10	Notebook	East	15	300
2024-02-20	Pen	North	30	60
2024-03-05	Notebook	South	20	400
2024-03-15	Pen	East	40	80
2024-04-01	Notebook	West	25	500
2024-04-10	Pen	South	35	70

1

Step 1: Format the sales data as a table to organize it clearly.

Select the data range including headers and press Ctrl+T to create a table.

Expected Result

Data is formatted as a structured table with filter buttons on each column.

2

Step 2: Add a new column to extract the month from the Date for monthly analysis.

=TEXT([@Date],"yyyy-mm")

Expected Result

A new column shows the year and month like '2024-01', '2024-02', etc.

3

Step 3: Create a summary table listing each Product and Month combination.

List unique products and months manually or using UNIQUE function if available.

Expected Result

Summary table has rows for each product and month combination.

4

Step 4: Calculate total sales amount for each product and month using SUMIFS.

=SUMIFS([Sales Amount],[Product Name],$A2,[Month],$B2)

Expected Result

Each cell shows the total sales amount for that product in that month.

5

Step 5: Use filters or conditional formatting to highlight the best-selling products per month.

Apply conditional formatting rules to highlight highest values in each month column.

Expected Result

Best-selling products per month are visually highlighted.

Final Result

Product   | 2024-01 | 2024-02 | 2024-03 | 2024-04
-----------------------------------------------
Notebook  | 200     | 300     | 400     | 500
Pen       | 50      | 60      | 80      | 70

✓Notebook sales increase steadily from January to April.

✓Pen sales are lower but consistent across months.

✓Structured data with clear columns and formulas makes it easy to summarize and find trends.

Bonus Challenge

Create a chart that shows monthly sales trends for each product.

Show Hint

Use the summary table and insert a line chart with months on the x-axis and sales on the y-axis.