Tutorial – Using Excel Data Forecasting Tools
The table below shows the marketing expenditure and corresponding sales figures on a month by month basis for SM Heating Products.
You are asked to produce an analysis of these figures for inclusion in a report to be presented to the board of directors. In doing this you will need to establish trends over the period shown for both expenditure and revenue and determine the relationship between these. This will require the use of statistical analysis tools available in Excel.
You will need to select appropriate trend-lines and relationship functions to bring the data into an understandable form. You must justify your selection.
Finally you should write a short summary of the technique used in the analysis and critically evaluate your results.
Month Marketing Expenditure (£000''s) Sales (£000''s)
Jul-08 300 530
Aug-08 346 635
Sep-08 834 1000
Oct-08 723 938
Nov-08 130 274
Dec-08 624 793
Jan-09 345 536
Feb-09 768 1450
Mar-09 464 800
Apr-09 624 826
May-09 270 373
Jun-09 389 403
Jul-09 917 1592
Aug-09 836 1632
Sep-09 613 804
Oct-09 741 1064
Nov-09 456 582
Dec-09 246 425
Jan-10 734 903
Feb-10 824 946
Mar-10 234 306
Apr-10 423 623
May-10 682 835
Jun-10 234 352