Have you ever thought of building an Excel Dashboard in 5 minutes?  Yes, only 5 minutes. That’s why it is a Challenge!   You may find the details of The 5-minute Excel Challenge at Bacon Bits.

Honestly, I haven’t thought of building a dashboard in such a short time.  In my experience, it takes hours (if not days) of work to create a dashboard.  Nevertheless, after reading the very last sentence of Mike’s post regarding the challenge:

“I’m very much looking forward to seeing all the cool things our Excel community can create!”

I’d decided to take the challenge.   And I managed to finish it in four and a half minutes! 🙂

As I am working in retail industry, I take the challenge with something I am familiar with: Store KPI Dashboard.  

In my entry, I created a dataset of daily sales record for 56 stores across 5 regions in a year. It is a dataset of more than 21k rows.  (Of course, they are all fake data)

In my dashboard, I show the following KPIs with monthly trend line and summary:

• % Variance vs. target
• Net Sales
• Average Transaction Value
• Average Unit Price
• Unit per Transaction

Needless to say, the dashboard is an interactive one that users can look at the KPIs of all stores, a particular region(s), or even a particular store(s).

Techniques used:

You may watch or download the making of my entry HERE.

I have to admit that I need some rehearsals in order to finish it in 5 minutes.  Moreover, the resulting dashboard is a simple one.  I believe there are rooms for enhancement, given more time is allowed.

Some thoughts of enhancement (if time is not a constraint):

• Top and bottom stores
• Radio buttons to allow users sort top/bottom stores by different KPIs
• Highlight stores that are below average or user-defined benchmark
• A bubble chart that places stores into a metric by Number of Transaction and Average Transaction Value 
• …

You have got better ideas?  Please leave your suggestion in comments.

Or even better, show your dashboard skill, take the challenge!  There are super nice prizes for winners. 🙂

All entries will be uploaded to the official 5-Minute Challenge YouTube Playlist.  I am looking forward to learning from the community for “out-of-the-box” approaches in using Excel.

Last but not least, I am more than happy if you give me a “like” to my entry in the official 5-Minute Challenge YouTube Playlist.  🙂