Pareto charts

Pareto is an analytical decision-making tool based on the 80/20 rule: 80% of a task can be completed by doing 20% of the work, or 80% of problems are caused by 20% of underlying issues. In marketing, this means 20% of your customer communications could lead to 80% of the desired response, or 20% of your product portfolio could yield 80% of a sales target.

A Pareto chart contains a column chart and a line graph. The column chart shows your values in descending order, to identify the best sellers or buyers. The line graph shows the cumulative percentage, so you can easily identify percentage thresholds.

Orbit includes two types of Pareto analysis, Category and Banded, letting you answer questions such as which product categories make up 80% of your sales, or who your top 20% of spenders are.

Category Pareto¶

A Category Pareto tile focuses on transactional data, to identify top-selling product categories or your most popular booking destinations, for example. Define a category variable and a numeric variable, and Orbit sorts the resulting Pareto chart in descending order by category, based on your numeric value. The line chart shows a cumulative percentage total, so you can quickly select the categories that bring you the most success. You can then add these to a user filter or create an audience.

You can select between an ascending or descending view.

Setting up a Category Pareto tile¶

To set up a Category Pareto tile:

1. From the Solution Tile tab, select the Category Level Pareto icon to reveal the data input options for this tile.

   

   Note

   You can add only one Pareto tile to a dashboard.

2. Select Category and Value from the associated menus.

   

   For Category, select the Category + option to search or browse data within your Apteco database. Choose a categorical data variable, such as Destination or Product Category. The filter only shows variables that you can use for this option.

   The Value field orders the destinations in descending order, from best category to worst. This is a numeric value, for example sales, profit, or number of complaints. For example, to determine which destinations yield around 80% of your profit, select Destination for Category and Profit for Value.

   Tip

   Use the sort order to set the initial view as ascending or descending. You can also change this on the dashboard Pareto chart.

   Tip

   If the category field has a large number of options, use category display to limit the number, for example to the top 20.

3. Select Show underlying data grid if you want to let users view the underlying data records.

4. Add any notes you want to appear under the chart title to the Notes section in this tab.
5. Select Apply.

Orbit applies the Pareto tile to the dashboard. Select Save to make the Pareto tile and dashboard interactive.

Category display option¶

When you select Allow category display, and the dashboard creator selects Allow the user to adjust this display option, you can increase the number of categories or choose to display the top % of categories by their value.

Banded Pareto¶

A Banded Pareto tile helps you identify your top customers based on a numeric variable, for example your top spenders based on a revenue variable, or your most frequent complainers based on a number of complaints variable. The rolling total percentage lets you select the percentage of people you want to focus on, then add them to a dashboard filter or create an audience.

Setting up a Banded Pareto tile¶

To set up a Banded Pareto tile:

1. From the Solution Tile tab, select the Pareto - Banded icon to reveal the data input options for this tile.

2. Select Value and Number of Bands from the associated menus.

   

   Orbit uses the Value variable to calculate spend bands with equal numbers of people in each band. For example, 10 bands allocates 10% of your individuals into each band, according to how much they spent on bookings.

   For example, to identify your top spenders based on a system variable called Total Spend of Bookings, select that variable for Value and sort descending.

   Tip

   Use the sort order to set the initial view as ascending or descending. You can also change this on the dashboard Pareto chart.

3. Select Show underlying data grid if you want to let users view the underlying data.

4. Select Apply.

   

The chart shows the specified number of bands and a cumulative percentage of people.

By hovering over a point on the line, you can see details such as the % of bands chosen and the % of people selected, along with the cumulative spend and the total percentage of spend this equates to.

By hovering over a bar on the chart, you can see details such as the spend band, the number of people selected in that bar, and the total spend of bookings in the bar.

For example, to select 50% of your top spending customers, use the tooltip to select the bars required. Select the line or a bar to select all bars to its left.

Selecting the bars changes their colour, and an Add to Filter button appears on the right-hand side of the chart. Select this to add the selection as a user filter to the dashboard.

Updating the filter¶

The Pareto solution lets you explore the selected top spenders. If you need further individuals, select the additional spend bands and choose Update Filter to add them to the User Filter.

To clear a Pareto filter, select Clear Pareto Filter on the chart, or delete the filter from Dashboard Filters.

Sorting the Pareto chart¶

When you created the Pareto chart, you chose a descending sort option to see your top spenders. You can change this in the dashboard to sort the chart ascending if required.

Select the sort icon at the top right of the chart to change how the data is ordered.

Using Pareto to filter the dashboard¶

As well as applying the selected bands as user filters, any selected bands also affect the data displayed in surrounding tiles. Add other tiles to understand your top spenders, such as which destinations they're frequenting, where they live, their length of relationship with the brand, or their income.

Update the Pareto chart to increase or decrease the spend bands, or the cumulative percentage of individuals selected, to explore patterns in the data.

Creating an audience from a Banded Pareto¶

Once you've applied a Pareto filter as a user filter, you can also add it to an audience. Select the +Audience icon in the dashboard.

Worked example¶

Using transactional attributes on a person level dashboard¶

Due to the hierarchical nature of Apteco software, one person can have many bookings, and those bookings can have many attributes. This provides powerful data models, but means you need a clear definition of dashboard results when working across tables.

This example illustrates this using Booking level information on a Banded Pareto tile on a Person dashboard.

On a dashboard built at a person level, a Banded Pareto tile is set up with 10 bands of the Profit field from the Booking table (transactional level).

In this example, number tiles show the calculations. The Bookings tile shows the total number of bookings made by all the People included in the dashboard filter. The People tile shows how many people the dashboard filter selected, and the Sum of Profit tile shows the total value of all bookings made by these individuals.

When you apply filters from Banded Pareto, the numbers change in a way that's different from the totals shown in the tooltip.

For example, the tooltip for the top 60% of bookings (the highlighted bars) shows a cumulative profit of £170,735,657. When applied as a Pareto filter on the dashboard, the surrounding tiles update to reflect the people who made the 60% most profitable bookings.

Because the dashboard is built at a person level, adding this filter selects the 767,733 people who made the 60% most profitable bookings. These individuals also made other bookings outside the most profitable ones, 1,636,735 bookings in total, bringing in a profit of £185,649,314. The difference between this figure and the tooltip total is the £14,913,657 profit from the additional, lower-profit bookings outside the ones selected in the Banded Pareto tile.

Solution tiles¶

Where to find it¶

To add either Pareto tile to a dashboard, put the dashboard in Edit mode and add a tile. Navigate to the Solution tab in the Visualisation Library and select the Pareto type you want to use.

Using the Pareto chart¶

In this example, destinations are sorted in descending order by profit, with a cumulative percentage of profit added as a secondary axis. This shows that the most profitable destinations are the United States, Germany, and France.

Using Pareto as a filter¶

Select any column to automatically select all the higher-value categories to its left. You can then apply them to a user filter to filter the dashboard, or use that filter to create an audience.

In this example, the secondary axis is selected to find 80% of profit. Selecting the node on the secondary axis highlights the United States, Germany, and France, which you can now apply to your user filter.

Select Add to filter to apply a filter to the whole dashboard.

You can add or remove categories as required. Select or deselect the categories and choose Update Filter to apply the updated categories to the User Filter.

Pareto filters appear in a separate PARETO filter section. If you've added other filters, select Delete to remove just the Pareto filters.

To clear a Pareto filter, select Clear Pareto Filter on the chart, or delete the filter from User Filters.

Understanding Pareto filters¶

As well as applying the selected categories as user filters, any selected categories also affect the data displayed in surrounding tiles. Add other tiles to understand, for example, the profit from these destinations, the seasonality of product sales, the best-selling regions that make up a percentage of your profit, or the type of holiday most frequently booked for the top-performing destinations.

Increase or decrease the percentage value or number of categories selected to explore patterns in the data.

View underlying data grid¶

If you selected Show underlying data grid when you set up the tile in the Visualisation Editor, a grid icon displays in the bottom left of the tile.