For Busy Times – New WDR Online Quick Views

By Danny Summers

The Weekly Department Review, known by all of The Group as WDR, has seen great change and development over the 20+ years since its beginning. First beginning as a fax-based composite report, then moving to an email and spreadsheet-based program, it has become a unique tool for knowing the pulse of business activity. It began with only a handful of Centers participating to well over a hundred reporting today and has seen much growth, further development, and acceptance through the years. Since its beginning, the WDR's most unique feature is that it is fully open (not blind) and you can see each Center's name.

Just as the jump from fax to email meant a major milestone, so has another been set beginning this year as the WDR moved to a web-based system. This move has changed the WDR from a static report, a snapshot at a particular point in time, to a position of LIVE DATA with tremendous data mining capabilities. In January, as we introduced the new WDR Online, we did so with over 9 different views for comparing, filtering, and analyzing many points of data. And now we have added even more.

Introducing Quick Views
In recent weeks we have had input from participating Centers on what you would like to have for use during the busiest times of the year – the most important data points to know... at a glance.

With this input, Tim Quebedeaux has created 5 new views of some of the most important data points to help give you just the most important information you need when your time is limited. You can see what we call The Big Three (Sales, Transaction Counts and Average Sales) by region, category performances by region and a quick side-by-side comparison to other Centers that are important to you. All of this can be for the subject week or YTD and with only a few clicks. Also included is a new consolidated view combining both labor and inventory ratios for weekly and YTD stats.

And while you now have these added quick views, all of the other views you have used before are still available through a Deeper Dive into the Numbers button. We want to continue to refine and develop the WDR Online moving forward and having your ideas is important.

New Training Video Added
Last week's session highlighting the new quick-view pages has been recorded and added to the WDR Upload and Dashboard Training page, located in the WDR menu. This 35-minute recording features Tim sharing the ideas behind each page view and the many options you have for quick viewing and comparing the data most important to you. We know you are currently in the busiest times of the year. This recording is available, whenever you have 35 spare minutes.

In the meantime, we want to say THANK YOU as we move into these weeks when we expect over 120 Centers to be sharing information. And as a result, we will be building a huge resource of data... for you!

If you have any questions please connect with Tim or me.

Happy Spring... and Happy Sharing!!!