So today’s blog is about adding Bump Charts in Excel using v8 XLCubed.
Initially a Bump Chart looks the same as a line chart – the difference is they plot the rank position rather than the actual value.
Let’s imagine that I sell a product in a marketplace with 10 other competitors. I may like to see how the rank position of my product and the competition changes over time to check if I’m gaining or losing market position. It’s a common scenario in pharma, where we have a good customer base.
You will usually want dates on the category axis so the trends are shown across time. The series then holds the items to be compared, in this case the products.
Our example has been set up with Measures on Headers, Product Categories on Series and Date Calendar on Categories. For more information on using Small Multiples in XLCubed please visit Small Multiple Charts.
The currently selected measure is Reseller Order Quantities (selected though the Measures slicer)
for the eleven months prior to April 2008 (selected through the Date slicer)
for a subset of products.
Looking at the bump chart you can see that I’ve selected Road Bikes and Mountain Bikes for easy comparison. You can quickly see that the rank position for Road Bikes dropped quite dramatically from May 2007, picked up again in September before dropping again in November and rising in December through to February 2008. The change for Mountain Bikes, on the other hand, was less dramatic, rising and falling slightly, steadying in February 2008 before dropping again the following month.
To create a bump chart just select Line – Bump as the Chart Type on your Small Multiple chart. The neat part is that all the rankings are worked out for you behind the scenes, without the need for lots of complex Excel gymnastics trying to work through the full result set month by month.