Buy Back Activity Dashboard

The Buy Back Activity dashboard is a combination of widgets: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), focused metric tables and graphic displays of your data.  The data displayed on the dashboard is intended to give you actionable insights into the relationships between what you acquire vs what you sell in used merchandise. Remember that when looking at this data, you are seeing both the acquisition & sales data for the same period of time; there would naturally be a delay from when you acquire to when you sell each item - using longer time frames in the date filter will smooth these delays in the data.

It is important to note that the data considered begins with the date on the heading panel of the dashboard, under Earliest Transaction Date.  This means that your trends and filtered data will start with the transactions on this date.

You will see a link to this document in the heading of the dashboard, click on Dashboard Help to access the document.

KPIs

At the top of the dashboard, the KPIs indicate what you have acquired and sold in dollars, quantities on average. You will also find customer information and how damages contribute to the metrics.  Here you can compare the KPIs to see at a high level your cost to buy merchandise vs your profit. As well, you can compare how many of the items you purchase are selling.  You are able to filter to specific locations and categories of merchandise to either narrow or broaden the comparison.

Graphic Displays

There are sections of graphic displays on the dashboard.  The graphics display comparisons between what you are acquiring vs selling, and trends for metrics over time.  You can see seasonality in the trends, as well as how the ebbs and flows of acquiring merchandise might affect the levels of sales.  Here you can find opportunities for marketing to your customers - perhaps a special offer when you most need to acquire merchandise, or during months where sales are traditionally low. Question your assumptions and expectations - and look for merchandising opportunities as well as outliers in your locations that could be training opportunities.

A bar graph shows you how much quantity is selling as a percentage of how much used merchandise you bought in the time period.  This is expressed as a percentage, and displayed by category as well as by location. This is a metric that compares the filtered time period's supply vs. demand - so it is possible to see percentages that exceed 100%. For example, if you filter to "this year", you will see the percentage of what sold in each category (or location) this year over the quantity that was purchased as used for this year.

Use this information to look at opportunities to acquire more merchandise via marketing or special incentives, where the demand is high; also focus on your locations for opportunities to increase sales in low-performing categories. You might find that certain categories are highly sought in some geographic areas vs. others - you might find that some locations have opportunities to better display or market lower performing categories.

You are able to see more detail for each category by right clicking on the bar and choosing switch dimensions. This can sometimes lead you to very high, or low performing categories or items that are affecting the overall performance; watch for these outliers to allow a better understanding of what is driving performance.

A trend line for the dollars and quantity that you are acquiring vs selling will show you how your merchandise is flowing. These trend lines will respond to the filters - looks for peaks and valleys in the data and understand if these are normal business cycles, then how to affect them. 

Additional line graphs show your trends in average quantities per customer, damaged percentages and declined percentages. Hovering over the points in the lines will reveal the metrics; pay attention first to the trend itself and expand your date selection to see the performance over longer periods of time. You might see normal seasonal flows, or isolated spikes - narrow the focus to specific locations if warranted, to discover marketing, training or other opportunities.

Focused Metrics

There are sections of data tables on the dashboard that will show you metrics by category, including the percentages of the total as well as the average you are paying and receiving, an whether you are making a profit on average. You can also see these metrics by location, where you can compare geographic areas, similar locations and how they are performing against your expectations.

If you hover to the right of the field names, you will see an arrow that allows an ascending/descending sort.  You'll also notice when you right-click on the row descriptions, you have the option to switch dimensions. Look for a switch dimension menu similar to the one in the bar charts

A separate data table will show you the categories that have the highest number of scans and how they rate in terms of declined items. Again coupled with the filters, you can see this information by location or for certain categories and how they compare. You will of course want to look for outliers in the graphic here - for example, where you might have a high number of scans together with a high level of declines - question the causes of outliers, is your labor force spending time in areas that have high decline rates? How can you improve your operations? Are you seeing decline rates commensurate with the category expectations?  Are certain locations wildly different from others?

You can export the data in these graphics and tables, to work with it outside of the dashboard.  Do this by clicking on the 3 dots at the top right corner of the widget, choose Download and export an image or file.  The recommended file type for a spreadsheet is CSV.