Explorazor Product Updates – Seamless Root Cause Analysis, Conditional Formatting, and More

Hello there, welcome. We’re excited to share the latest updates made on our data exploration and analysis tool, Explorazor, covering root cause analysis, conditional formatting, and dual axis charts. We’ll also highlight the benefits that Brand & Sales can derive from these updates. 

If you have headed directly to this blog without browsing the website, here’s a quick introduction to Explorazor: curated especially for Brand and Sales Teams at Pharma and Consumer Goods companies, Explorazor allows users to explore their data faster, better, and easier than on Excel by combining all datasets into a single consolidated dataset that can be queried via a simple search interface.

Let’s dive into the updates:

  1. Root Cause Analysis 

As the name suggests, root cause analysis is the process of arriving at the heart, or the root cause, of any event, usually an event of concern. 

Root cause analysis (RCA) helps managers determine why the problem occurred in the first place. For example, in Explorazor, users can identify the reasons behind market share degrowth and find out which state or city was responsible for it.

How it works is that the user identifies a table value, clicks on it, and is able to drill down into any hierarchy or drill across KPIs from multiple datasets in the same view. Here’s what it looks like:

Explaining ‘drill across’ further, users can navigate through multiple datasets at the same time. 

This is a highly interactive method for users to rapidly diagnose issues or pain points, allowing them visibility into multiple data cuts simultaneously. We recommend skimming through the blog ‘Conduct Drill-Down on an Integrated Dataset via Point-and-Click’ to see an example of how RCA is conducted on Explorazor via double-clicking. The example is complete with screenshots from Explorazor. 

We’re also working on further updates within root cause analysis – the freedom to sort values automatically will soon be available.

  1. Conditional Formatting

Users can provide business rules on their data, above or below which they want the data to be highlighted differently. This allows them to quickly identify outliers or get a clear view of when they hit a target.

Actual product screenshot - Explorazor - Conditional Formatting

Another significant benefit of conditional formatting on Explorazor is the option to pin a conditionally formatted query directly to the dashboard. The conducted query is saved to the dashboard for future use and keeps auto-updating, so there’s a lot of smoothness added to the querying processes of users, who would have previously had to re-run the same formatting procedure multiple times. 

There are a lot of design-based options for conditional formatting, like color-coding areas of improvement in red and success zones as green. 

  1. Dual, and Triple Axis Charts

One may have to look at the trends of multiple different KPIs at the same time. However, not all KPIs will have similar values – one could be in the millions while another could be in the 100s. Correlating such figures is a challenge.

What Dual Axis Charts do is allow users to see the trends in all these different KPIs together, so that they can correlate how changes in different KPIs affect others. 

Actual product screenshot - Explorazor - Triple Axis Charts

Users also have total control over each axis w.r.t the metric shown. For example, Axis 1 can display the trend of Market Share while Axis 2 displays Internal Sales. 

With the ability to look at the trends of multiple KPIs of different scales at the same time, the relationship between two or more measures can be demonstrated and correlations, wherever the nature of the values allow, can be viewed.

Triple Axis Charts? Works the same way as Dual. 

Get More Out of Your Datasets, and Your Skill Set!

Explorazor is not here to radically change the way Brand & Sales teams interact with data. We simply propose streamlining scattered datasets under a single roof, accessible to all. 

Explorazor focuses on letting each department and individual use their skill sets in solving real market problems and finding ways to promote their brand and grow their revenue, instead of getting embroiled in the daily tangles of multiple tabs, inaccessibility to needed datasets, and undue dependence on others for ad-hoc analysis. Insights Teams benefit greatly too – check out the reasons why an Insights Team should consider Explorazor for their managers

If you are a Brand Manager, learn about the 3 Types of data analysis Brand Managers can perform super-easily on Explorazor

We hope you find these product updates useful. If you have any suggestions or queries, do not hesitate to contact us; we are more than happy to connect and help.

Take an Interactive Product Tour of Explorazor!

Data Consolidation – The Need of the Hour for Brand & Sales Teams

In this blog, we’ll be highlighting some issues that Brand & Sales teams face with data on a daily basis, and making a case for how data consolidation can remedy these core issues:

So Many Data Sources, So Little Time

Brand & Sales teams deal with so many different datasets at a time: there’s primary sales, secondary sales, MS Value, Media Spends, Research Data from Kantar, Nielsen, or IQVIA, depending on the industry; and more. 

To manage the plethora of data, professionals mainly use Excel. The research we conducted at vPhrase, interviewing 100+ experienced industry professionals, validated many of our hypotheses when we initially started out developing Explorazor, the data exploration tool designed especially for frictionless data exploration. Some of these hypotheses were:

  1. Managers use Excel by default – without any additional support

Excel has become one of the constants of life – all operations are conducted on Excel, without any other tool to even support or augment it. Power BI does extend some value, but it’s meant for dashboards and not exploration.  

To think of replacing Excel was not even in the minds of the professionals we interviewed.

  1. Excel is great – but it does pose some problems

For what man, walking the face of this earth, can deny Excel’s greatness? Shakespearean passions aside, Excel is THE standard for a reason – it facilitates data analysis, holds enormous datasets, enables pivot extraction, conditional formatting and n other functions.

However, we believe that there is an easier way for Brand Managers to conduct data exploration and analysis, without leaving Excel entirely.

As such, we spoke about it with Senior Managers – they agreed that while Excel is the go-to for all number crunching, insight extraction and strategy formation, having to work on multiple datasets means more time consumption and manual work. Laptops process data slowly as compared to a cloud server, which also contributes to time consumption. Furthermore, due to fragmented data storage, managers often have to rely on Insights teams for ad-hoc analysis and crucial insights, something they would rather prefer to live without.

After validating both our hypotheses, we presented Explorazor to our audience – and asked them to gauge one central benefit that Explorazor provides:

Data Consolidation – The Answer To Many of Excel’s Drawbacks

Explorazor is a data exploration tool that lets users conduct queries, obtain data pivots, and conduct root cause analysis via point-and-click, on an INTEGRATED, CONSOLIDATED dataset. There are various industry terminologies going around, like data stitching, data consolidation, unifying datasets, combining datasets, etc., all refer to the same thing. The Explorazor team cleans, standardizes, and combines the datasets for a single-platform usage through Explorazor.

A clarification here: Explorazor complements Excel, and does not replace it.

An Integrated or Consolidated Dataset Means 

  1. Better correlation between data points

Your primary sales is doing good, but your call average has actually been declining since COVID. Such data correlation is easily obtained on platforms like Explorazor. 

Similarly, Dolo made huge sales during the pandemic, but it actually sold more due to HCP recommendations and ad campaigns, rather than calling and field sales efforts. Now that the pandemic has receded, it comes to light that the rural areas have largely been ignored and a sizable chunk of sales comes only from select urban areas.  

Such data exploration and correlation is much easier on an integrated dataset.

  1. Better root cause analysis

We’ve written a separate blog just covering this point. Explorazor helps users arrive at the ACTUAL root cause of events, because users can conduct drill-down and drill-across on the entire data at a time. 

It’s all about better decision-making.

  1. Time and Effort Efficiency 

Managers spend more time testing hypotheses and conducting ad-hoc analysis independently, without having to revert to Insights Teams. Explorazor lightens the laptop burden of processing huge datasets by storing data on server, accessible via browser. 

An Integrated or Consolidated Dataset Also Means 

  • Faster analysis, faster laptops
  • Better, and easier analysis
  • Greater Independence for Brand Managers
  • Greater space for Insights Teams to focus on long-term strategies
  • A space for users have ready access to required datasets
  • A space for users to collaborate on projects
  • A data-driven work culture
  • Greater revenue 

Take an Interactive Product tour of Explorazor!