ACCA Strategic Professional · Advanced Performance Management · Data science and analytics
Zenara Retail reviews its monthly sales dashboard, which shows revenue by store, product category and week for the past 12 months, along with year-on-year percentage changes. No attempt is made to explain causes or forecast. Which type of analytics does this dashboard represent?
The dashboard is descriptive analytics because it summarises historical results, such as revenue by store, category and week, and shows what happened. It does not explain causes, forecast future sales or recommend actions, which would be diagnostic, predictive or prescriptive analytics respectively.
- ADescriptive analyticsCorrect
- BDiagnostic analytics
- CPredictive analytics
- DPrescriptive analytics
Explanation
The dashboard summarises what has happened using historical data, with no explanation of causes, forecasts or recommended actions. That is descriptive analytics. Diagnostic would require drilling into why sales changed.
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