Level 1 · Quiz: from a vague request to a SMART objective

Most analysis requests arrive as a feeling: sales are down, customers are unhappy, the app seems slow. Megan’s ticket is six words long. Before you open a spreadsheet, turn the feeling into an objective: one sentence that says what you will measure, against what, for which decision, by when. If you can’t write that sentence, you aren’t ready to start.

The SMART checklist

letter	asks	for Megan’s request
Specific	Which metric, which part of the business?	Completed marketplace revenue, not “sales”
Measurable	Compared with what? What number shows the answer?	November vs December 2025: 57,032.56 → 45,898.19, −19.5%
Achievable	Do the data, time and tools exist?	Orders, lines and products are all in the store tables
Relevant	Which decision does it serve?	Whether to change the listing before the February promotions
Time-bound	By when? For which period?	By Friday, January 16, on November–December 2025

The checklist works on the objective of the analysis, not on a business target. “Grow marketplace revenue by 50%” is a target someone else sets; your objective is to explain or measure something so that person can decide.

Look at the data before you promise anything

Achievable means checking that the data can answer the question. A first look at the store tables for this one:

• Status. Orders can be completed, cancelled, refunded or pending, and pending orders cluster in the last days of December. Decide up front: completed only, as in every report in this course.
• Bad rows. 24 order lines have a quantity of 0 or less. Exclude them and say so.
• Seasonality. November holds Black Friday. A December drop may partly be November being unusually high. Comparing with December 2024 tells you how much.

None of this needs a formula yet. It is reading column by column, sorting and filtering, and writing down what you see.

Plan the report before the analysis

Sketch the report the objective will become. The same skeleton works for a one-page email and a twenty-page review:

1. Title that says the result area: “Marketplace revenue, November–December 2025”.
2. Executive summary, five or six lines, written last: what was analysed, on which data, the main findings, the recommendation.
3. Objective: the SMART sentence.
4. Data and method: period, sources, filters (completed orders, quantity > 0), how revenue is calculated, which tools.
5. Findings: each one as what we saw, the evidence (a number, table or chart) and what it means.
6. Recommendations and next steps: concrete actions, and what to measure after them.
7. Limits: what the data can’t tell you (shipping fees are out, returns are still arriving, no data on the marketplace’s own traffic).

Writing the headings first shows what numbers you need. The rest of this chapter builds exactly those numbers for the November report: order totals, a channel summary, return rates and a KPI block, then the one-line summary that opens the email.

Common mistakes

• Starting with the data. Opening the export before agreeing the question produces charts, not answers.
• No comparison. “Revenue was 45,898.19” means nothing until it is set against a period, a target or another channel.
• No deadline. Without one, the analysis grows until someone asks where it is.
• Promising an outcome. An analysis can explain a drop; it can’t guarantee a recovery.