A CONNECTED LEARNING PATH / 18 GUIDES
Operational analytics.
Follow a question, explore a worked example and choose one useful action. Read in order or start with the challenge in front of you.
Explore every topicRead a sales pipeline for health rather than volume
Assess pipeline evidence, stage criteria, ageing and next steps before using opportunity totals to guide a sales review.
Build an invoice-ageing view with clear dates
Build invoice ageing from an explicit reporting date, due-date convention and reconciled open balances, with disputed and unapplied items visible.
Reconcile promised cash with collected cash
Reconcile commitments, invoice balances and verified receipts with explicit cut-offs and allocations instead of treating promises as cash.
Create an inventory exception report people can act on
Create an inventory exception queue with trustworthy units, dated stock positions, demand assumptions and specific actions for each risk.
Compare staffing demand and available capacity
Compare demand with usable skill-specific hours, availability and timing rather than treating headcount as interchangeable capacity.
Investigate delivery lateness by the relevant milestone
Investigate lateness using the promise and completion milestone relevant to the customer, with revised dates and missing events visible.
Measure service quality with a balanced view
Assess service quality with resolution, reopenings, effort and customer context so closure volume does not become the sole target.
Classify product returns without oversimplifying reasons
Classify returns with reviewable evidence, multiple contributing factors and an unknown category before choosing a corrective action.
Read a support queue using age and complexity
Review support backlog by age, stage and complexity while reconciling arrivals and closures so shrinking volume does not hide neglected work.
Investigate purchase-price variance with context
Investigate purchase-price differences using matched specifications, units, quantities and cost boundaries before judging supplier performance.
Understand how product mix changes overall margin
Separate within-product margin from sales-mix movement using consistent revenue and cost boundaries and a reconciled aggregate.
Compare acquisition spending with a defined cohort
Align acquisition costs with the customers and observation windows they support, and keep attribution uncertainty and delayed outcomes visible.
Investigate a regional performance difference
Investigate regional differences with matched coverage, exposure and customer mix before ranking teams or attributing performance.
Explain forecast-versus-actual movement
Explain forecast-to-actual differences with a reconciled bridge that distinguishes assumptions, timing, mix and data revisions.
Create an operational review agenda from the data
Build an operational meeting around material exceptions, decisions and follow-up evidence instead of reading every dashboard measure aloud.
Define unit economics around the actual service unit
Define the actual unit of service, cost boundary and outcome window before interpreting per-unit economics.
Reconcile finance and operations without forcing one total
Explain legitimate differences between bookings, delivery, billing and cash through an event-based reconciliation rather than forcing equal totals.
Track whether an action changed the intended outcome
Evaluate operational actions with dated hypotheses, implementation evidence, matched outcomes and competing explanations.