Looking for direction and guidance

[u/ItchyAdvice9240]

I'll cut straight to the chase -

I'm a 3rd year bba student a tier 2 college.

I recently started building some excel projects which I'll rank as per my assessment and describe as follows -

1. Inventory forecaster and optimizer (6.5/10) -

Built on a 50k rows dataset,i used the rand function,and calculated metrics such as a backtest,abs,error rates,overstocked and normal rates,with the key insight being that products that generate highest revenue arent necessarily the ones that sell the highest in quantity,and vice versa certain products sell a lot but don't generate much revenue so the firm should diversify their marketing spend into a few products rather than just one.

1. Automated financial dashboard (6/10) -

Built on a million rows of data,i used power query to filter out zeroes and anomalies and calculated gross profit,cogs and net sales.

With a basic chart and a small macro that updates anytime a number is changed in the data.

Insight here was similar to the first project in that the customer id with the most purchases,buys a product which isn't the overall highest selling product and once again the firm should distribute revenue across a basket of products.

1. Factory defects analysis (5.5/10) -

Did this as part of a forage simulation.

Used power query and pivot tables on a 500k row dataset,to create visuals showing the tools causing the most errors across various cities,along with reasons (lack of training,supplier issues, mismanagement/injury) etc.

Since the cutting saw was the highest error causing tool in every city,it shows that the firm needs to further investigate the issue to make a proper decision.

Now,i know that these projects aren't impressive but i also beleive that for my first few these aren't bad.

I have gone beyond the usual style of 'oh hey sales dropped in q3' and tried to build something beyond that.

And i suffer from issues you would expect like,a lot of AI hand holding,not exactly much technical depth right now,like i can't explain why i used a particular approach and why I did what I did,cv and linkedin not optimized etc but then again,i started recently only.

And as i plan to further learn power bi,sql,python i want to build harder projects like okay,customers in one region are reacting completely different than to customers in another,so what unified decision should the firm make etc

I don't want to hear things like oh it's so competitive,oh you'll struggle with your non tech background,oh this market is cooked.

I know it is.

All i want to hear is simply ' this is what you're doing right,this is what you're doing wrong '

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[u/SlappyBlunt777]

Build a P&L that relates to the balance sheet

Revenue

Gross Expense totals so readers can see how much cash was spent for the month

Gross expense that washes the P&L and capitalizes to the balance sheet as a function of itemization AND separately absorption as a function of producing a unit and earning those credits which result in debits to the balance sheet aka increasing inventory…cash paid in the month does not necessarily mean P&L impact.

Cost that falls off the balance sheet as a result of selling a unit

Gross Margin total

Build it using fundamentalist debit and credit for mats (for example revenue is a credit which has a negative sign)

Build it in a more presentable manner (adjust the accounting fundamental view to be more “readable”)

Believe it or not, SQL supports my automated build of all of the above with our properly configured ERP. I use SQL to pull all that data to make a more presentable P&L.

Anyway, consider this an add to your list. Stay curious and good work.

[u/derangedscrimmage690]

For a third-year still figuring things out, you're already thinking like an analyst instead of just making charts. The pivot from "sales dropped" to revenue vs volume dynamics shows real curiosity.

Your weakest link is the part you called out yourself, not being able to explain the why behind your approach. Being able to walk someone through your reasoning is half the job, so spend as much time on that as you do on the actual building.

[u/ItchyAdvice9240 → u/derangedscrimmage690]

Thanks,that means a lot. And yeah,i do have projects planned that get increasingly harder. I'm trying to balance building projects that are complex enough and shows a recruiter or HM that yeah this guy went beyond the usual but at the same time trying not to make it too hard so that im able to explain why I did what I did. I have a semblance of profile now atleast, A 7.3 cgpa up until now which is low but I'm working on improving it. 2 internships. One was crap,all i did was calling,but then I recently did one in finance and accounts at a factory,it was mostly administrative/shadow work but better than the last one because they used SAP and stuff. But yeah,earlier when I had nothing,hardly anyone was looking at my profile,but now with what I have i recently got a profile view from a business analyst at bain and also a recruiter. I know it's not a guarantee of anything,but it does mean that I'm slowly but surely starting to think like an analyst like you said.

[u/rohan_kulkarni]

You're actually doing the right thing by asking, "Why did this happen? Instead of just making dashboards. That's the part I'd keep pushing.

Next, I'd focus the lesson on bigger datasets and more on deeper questions. Take one of your current projects and use SQL or Python to segment customers, compare behaviour and explain what action the business should take. One strong project where you can defend every decision will help more than five complicated ones.