Chart calculations

Question

If you have 3 revenue segments and have the $ and # of units sold per segment for last 3 years in a chart, should we automatically calculate the Total revenue per segment for each of the 3 years? Or is it fine to compare how the drivers (I.e $ and # of units sold) changed per year?

would the interviewer prompt you if they are looking for a revenue based analysis? And if they prompt you, will they dock points because you compared drivers instead?

Answer 1

Hi there,

In my view you should do both (caveat: depends on the case/prompt).

I would immediatedly flag the key trend/issue in $ and # (oh, wow, x unit sells a lot of units but for not much $...this could be an issue).

Then propose calcualting to total revenue per segment to see which one is driving the most change. Key word = propose. Please avoid "automatically" doing anything in a case!

Answer 2

Hi Anon,

Short answer: It depends

Long answer:

From what I gather, you are asking about whether or not you should make 9 calculations while observing the graph (3 revenue segments for 3 years). It would be good if you can share a graph with the representive data so that we can get some more context.

Depending on the actual numbers in the graph, one of the following things can happen:

The calculations are relatively doable and you will get more insight from them once you have done the multiplication. In this case - it would be a good idea to go ahead with the calculations while studying the data.
The calculations are complex and most of the trends and insights are coming out from the drivers only. In this case the first order of business should be to give insights on the driver-level. Once you are done with that - you can indicate to the interviewer that you are about to go for the complex math. If they are already satisfied with your analysis so far, they will stop you from going further, or else they will let you do the math in which case they are also checking your calc skills.

How easy or complex the calculations are also depends on you and your comfort level with some amount of mental math.

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

It depends on what you are being asked about but if it's a comparison than it would make sense to comment about the drivers as well as the implication on total revenue per segment.

There is no strict point systems behind a case interview and so I wouldn't worry about coming up with the "perfect" answer, which also doesn't exit!