Data mining technology has become very important for modern businesses. Companies use data mining technology for a variety of purposes. One of the most important is collecting revenue data to draft financial statements, forecast future sales and make decisions to address revenue shortfalls. These factors are why companies will spend over $12 billion on data analytics for marketing solutions by 2027.
Excel is one of the tools that can help companies use mined revenue data. After aggregating data, you can create a sales report with ODBC.
Merging Excel with Data Mining Technology Can Help You Create Stellar Sales Reports
Anyone who has worked in sales knows how important it is to keep track of sales data on a regular basis. Nonetheless, because of the rapid nature of sales, reps and decision-makers have almost no time to pause and revise their work and outcomes. Consequently, it’s difficult to make accurate estimations or identify significant tendencies in your sales procedures.
Sales departments benefit from having a robust sales reporting system because of these time restrictions. A well-designed system, for example, can assist sales staff in tracking leads and best-selling products and services. As a result, employees who work in sales acquire a lot of useful data from a sales report solution. This is one of the major bases for data-driven marketing strategies.
It can be difficult for businesses to determine which software to use among the many options available. In fact, for many SMEs and start-ups, specialist software can be prohibitively expensive and prove to be a waste of money. Aside from that, these sorts of software have a severe learning curve.
Create your own automated sales report template in Excel as an alternative. Companies may simply construct a sales report by using spreadsheets, a widely used technology.
Every sales process involves a large amount of data, such as lead count and sales goals. As a result, you’ll be able to generate a wide range of sales reports, including lead source reports and revenue reports. The reports you include in your dashboard are determined by your goal and how you intend to use them:
Report on Revenue Growth
The income your company earns is the focus of revenue performance reports, which give you an overall picture of how well your organization is doing. It shows the revenue made by clients and customers, as well as the total revenue for a certain period.
Report on Sales Forecasts
Sales forecast reports are estimates of how much money your company will make in the near future. These reports are frequently based on ongoing negotiations with your clients and leads, and they anticipate the amount of money they could generate for your company. To see the discrepancy between your estimates and actual earnings, sales forecast reports are generally reconciled with revenue reports.
Sales Predictions Report
A sales forecast report is an estimate of how much money your company will make in the near future. Customers and leads are often the focus of these reports, which anticipate the revenue they could generate for your company. In most cases, sales forecast reports are compared with revenue reports in order to assess how your estimates compare to actual results.
Report on the Performance of Sales Reps
In order to monitor and measure the productivity and profitability of each of your sales reps, you can compile a performance report. For each opportunity, the number of calls made to potential customers and the number of new leads created is included in these reports. Your best sales reps and those who need more sales training can be identified with the help of performance reports for sales representatives.
Report on Lead Conversion
Your sales pipeline data is used to generate lead conversion reports. It is possible to view the average path a lead takes through the various phases of your sales funnels, the number of leads converted, and the number of leads lost.
Report on Competitive Analysis
You cannot overlook the importance of competitive analysis. Over 90% of Fortune 500 companies use it, so you should incorporate it into your data-driven business model.
A competitive analysis report helps users to discover and assess important competitors, as well as their products, sales, and marketing strategy. It gives users a clear picture of how their products stack up against those of their competitors and how to improve upon those results. Product creation and enhancement, as well as marketing techniques, are all aspects of this report’s focus.
Microsoft Excel includes the ability to import live data from a database using an Excel ODBC connection. You can easily import sales data from an online database into your Excel spreadsheet. Once the data is in the spreadsheet, you can use Excel to perform further analysis of your sales data. Access databases and plain text files (such as csv files) are all supported as well as ODBC data sources, and many more. It’s necessary to have an ODBC driver for the source in order to load data into Excel.
With an ODBC driver, Excel can access both traditional databases and cloud-based services. Excel ODBC can connect to databases such as Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and cloud services such as Salesforce, QuickBooks, and Zoho CRM without the need for client software.
To boost the effectiveness while connecting to the Oracle database, it’s a good idea to use an Oracle ODBC driver. ODBC-aware programs can connect directly to Oracle Server and Oracle Cloud through TCP/IP, eliminating the requirement for Oracle Client. For real-time analytics, a direct link between an external application and Oracle speeds up data delivery. It also simplifies deployment because no additional client software is required to be distributed along with the driver. Oracle’s native client library can also be used to establish a connection that makes the process of creating a sales report using ODBC much easier.
Estimates of your company’s future revenue are included in a sales report. It provides users with a clear picture of how their products, sales, and marketing are compared to those of their rivals in the marketplace. The Excel ODBC connection in Microsoft Excel can be used to import live data from both on-premises databases and cloud-based services.