Compare anything to anything. Really!

There are many ways to use the compare operation, but here's a few as an overview.  

1. Compare to adjacent cell. “Show each cell as a percent of the cell to it’s left”.
2. Compare to another crosstab. “Show each cell as a percent of last month's values”
3. Compare specific value. “Show each cell as a percent of the average of the crosstab.” (same crosstab or different crosstab)
4. Compare all rows to specific row. “Show each cell as a percent of the first row in the crosstab.” (same crosstab or different crosstab)
5. Compare all columns to specific column.  “Show each cell as a percent of the last column in the row.”. (same crosstab or different crosstab)

Note, in NextAnalytics, all comparisons are multi-datasource in the same report. This means you can get percentages of cells from a database against cells in a spreadsheet without resorting to a spreadsheet!

Our starting crosstab is a list of sales reps, with their sales figures for each month as numeric columns. Let's use this as a starting point for the example comparisons. 

1. This example shows  “Show each cell as a percent of the cell to it’s left”.   You'll see that the cells in this crosstab or query result set have been re-stated as a percent of the cell to it’s left.   Also available are growth, net change (difference), and ratio.

2. Our next example goes back to the first crosstab, and shows "each cell as a percent of the average of the crosstab.” This command works on your choice of the same crosstab or another crosstab. This command looks at all the cells in a crosstab or query result set and re-states it as a percent of the average of the crosstab.   You have the choice of specifying other aggregations such as minimum, maximum, median.

3. Our next example goes back to the first crosstab, and shows "each cell as a percent of the first row in the crosstab.” This command works on your choice of the same crosstab or another crosstab. This command looks at all the cells in a crosstab or query result set and re-states it as a percent of the a row in the crosstab which you indicate by name or zero based index.  It’s expected that you previously would either have sorted the data, or will have use the Combine command to create an aggregate which is of the name or position you wish to compare to.

4. Our next example goes back to the first crosstab, and shows "each cell as a percent of the last column in the row.”.  This command works on your choice of the same crosstab or another crosstab.  This is just like the previous example, except that it’s on the column axis.

5. Our next example goes back to the first crosstab, and shows "each cell as a percent of the corresponding cell on the budget crosstab”