Factorlink: a visual analysis tool for sales performance management

Abstract

Sales Performance Management (SPM) solutions for enterprise-grade businesses generate large volumes of multi-dimensional data, including temporal event sequences and tabular attributes. Among attributes of different data structures, it is difficult to find clear connections between factors and outcomes. Discovering key factors and their influences from multivariate data can provide instructional advice to help sales representatives (SR) maintain healthy relationships with customers and achieve sales goals. This paper describes the FactorLink approach for 1) correlating temporal event sequences, multi-dimensional tabular data with their outcomes, 2) interactively assisting users to find key factors and understand their influences, and 3) exploring potential outcomes by reviewing and comparing the patterns found in the integrated SPM data. We conducted several case studies, and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.