Guide: Data Analysis with Julius for Small Business Owners

[antoniojurlina1]

As a small business owner, diving into the depths of sales data analysis can seem daunting, especially when coding and technical skills are not in your toolbox. That’s where my conversation with Julius, showcased an invaluable asset for small businesses that want to learn from their sales data. Here’s how Julius transformed complex data sets into actionable insights without me needing to write a single line of code.

Understanding the Sales Dataset with Julius

I approached Julius with a (sample) dataset encapsulating sales data, curious about the insights it could uncover. The dataset was robust, containing 2823 entries spread across 25 columns, including ORDERNUMBER, QUANTITYORDERED, PRICEEACH, SALES, and ORDERDATE, alongside customer-specific information like CUSTOMERNAME, COUNTRY, and contact details.

Identifying Trends and Peak Sales Periods

My first task was to grasp the ORDERDATE range within the dataset, which Julius quickly pinpointed as spanning from January 6, 2003, to May 31, 2005. Curious about peak sales periods, I asked Julius for an analysis. Without needing to navigate any complex software or scripting, Julius presented a plot of monthly sales over time. This visual aid was crucial, identifying peak sales periods with precision and allowing me to visualize our sales trends directly.

Spotting Declining Products

Concerned about product performance, I queried Julius about declining products. Initially, an all-product overview for 2005 suggested a decline, but I sought a more nuanced analysis that accounted for seasonal trends. Julius then provided a month-by-month comparison for specific product lines, revealing which products were declining in the crucial January to May period. This tailored analysis highlighted specific areas of concern, allowing for targeted strategies to address these downturns.

Customer Segmentation for Targeted Marketing

Moving forward, I aimed to understand the customer base better, particularly focusing on those interested in our Classic Cars and Vintage Cars product lines. Julius segmented customers into quartiles based on their average spend, offering a clear picture of spending habits. This segmentation, visualized through a bubble chart, can inform a potential targeted marketing campaign, identifying customer groups by their spending levels and engagement.

Sales Forecasting for Inventory Management

Finally, I tasked Julius with forecasting future sales for the remainder of 2005 to manage inventory levels effectively. Julius outlined a plan involving data preparation, exploratory data analysis, and the selection and training of a forecasting model. The process culminated in a forecast plot juxtaposing historical sales against future projections, a crucial step for inventory planning.

Conclusion: The Power of LLMs in Business Analytics

My dialogue with Julius exemplified the incredible potential of LLMs in transforming raw data into strategic insights. Small business owners can find a powerful ally in tools like Julius. This conversation not only can save countless hours of learning coding , building spreadhseets, but also can equipp owners with data-driven strategies to optimize sales, inventory, and marketing efforts. The future of business analytics lies in making complex data accessible.

[zach]

what sort of data is required to make an accurate sales forecast with Julius? does it need to be over a certain amount of time?

[antoniojurlina1]

Ideally you want to give it the following:

• As much data as you can, almost always the more is better (more can mean more data points at the same granularity so you get a longer time period of data and more seasonal trends but it can also mean more over the same period of time where you increase granularity, so if you had monthly data you would get weekly or daily instead).
• Depending on what you are trying to predict, you always want to think about what matters for the outcome to really clarify the signal and control for a lot of things that influence it. For example, if you are forecasting sales, you cannot just rely on past sales to describe a trend, you also want to incorporate data about economic indicators for the whole country, like the United States GDP so that Julius can incorporate it into the predictions.
• You want to incorporate data about other highly relevant factors. Let’s say you have a bakery and sugar and flour prices really matter for you. You can try to find and incorporate data on these two ingredients for the same data period you already have for sales. That way, when Julius trains a model that predicts sales in the future, it will consider how these features affect it and weight it appropriately. That means you now have a model just sitting there, trained and you can give Julius sugar and flour cost expectations for the next few months and Julius will give you a prediction that incorporates that data and is more accurate.
• Selecting additional data is very important and usually depends on contextual knowledge.