Revenue fell 17%. The CFO wants to know why by Thursday.
Golden breaks the drop into where it came from and how much each piece contributed, then checks whether anything in the outside world lines up with it.
The worst month in three years
Jordan is regional finance lead for a retailer in six states. October revenue lands 17% below September, the worst month-over-month move in three years.
The CFO wants to know by Thursday: pricing problem, product problem, or something local? The usual answer is two days of pivot tables, slicing by state, then city, then category, hoping the story shows up.
Click the drop, ask why
Select the two months on the chart and ask "Why did this change?" Golden writes up what changed, what drove it, what moved the other way, and any external events whose geography matches where the drop is concentrated.
Every number in the narrative comes straight from the data. The external event is labeled as context, so Jordan can tell the CFO what the data shows and what might relate.
How Golden answers it
Spot the trough
A monthly revenue line makes October obvious. Hover it and you can see September to October is the biggest drop in the series.
Ask why
Shift-click September and October, then choose "Why did this change?" The headline is steerable: swap the measure or either period from a dropdown and the analysis re-runs.
Follow the drivers
The narrative names the top contributors with their shares, plus the offsetting movements. Click a dimension name to focus the detail on it.
Drill the tree
A driver tree shows the total change at the root and every state beside it. Washington carries all of it. Click + on WA to split it by city.
Rule out seasonality
A year-over-year bar chart for Washington puts October next to the same month in other years, so you know it's an event and the calendar didn't do it.
What Jordan brings to the CFO
- 01Revenue fell from $1,110,369 to $922,206, down $188,163 (16.9%). The next worst month is 7.5%
- 02Washington fell $196,012 (66.2%), 104% of the total drop. The other five states each grew 1.2% to 1.8%
- 03Inside Washington, Seattle fell 75.1% and Spokane fell 45.4%
- 04The dates line up with a major machinists' strike in Washington, which Golden cites as external context
Hand it off, keep it live
Switch the headline from Revenue to Orders and confirm orders fell in step, which rules out pricing. Then save the panel straight to a dashboard with a driver tree and a narrative tile.
Share the dashboard to the finance channel. The CFO can re-anchor the Explain Change tile to any other pair of months without asking Jordan.
Answer the CFO before Thursday
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