Month: November 2010

Yes, I’m a data geek and I crunch company operating results for fun.  Check this out…

Wolframalpha is a public data search engine which allows for lots of complex data analysis.  The data below is how much revenue each publicly traded company generates when it is divided by the total number of employees it has (per year).  I work in the retail sector so I first looked at how much revenue each company makes if it were divided by their number of employees.  As you can see below I for instance was able to determine that Kroger is making $36,841.74 more revenue per employee than Safeway.  The numbers are correct and publicly available via calculation but they don’t make sense to me.

I’ve posted similar things in the past and have had some really smart followers of this blog add to the conversation so I hope this post continues that trend.  Why would a Safeway employee create more revenue per year than a Walmart employee?  Why would a Kroger employee make $36,841,74 more revenue per year than a Safeway employee?  The interesting thing about doing the calculation this way is it takes out unions, employee compensation, and other factors.  What are the contributing factors?  Is sales per square foot the real reason the numbers are so unexpected?  Is the number of retail stores a major factor?  Did these numbers surprise you?  Is looking at annual company revenue by employee even important?  Then when you think each retail revenue by employee is high look at Google and Apple!

Annual Company Revenue/Employee
Kroger =    $244,659.51
Safeway = $207,817.77
Walmart = $198,398.10
Target =    $189,692.31

Google =   $1.81 million
Apple =     $1.32 million

Source: http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Disclosure: I am in no way representing any company in this post or site.  I’m surfacing public data and merely asking what we can derive (if anything) from it.  Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks for adding to the conversation.

– You should look at profits by employee.  A more telling story.

“The exchange between Ferrari and Lamborghini is often cited as the latter’s inspiration for founding a carmaker in the first place, but it is as much the stuff of legend and myth as it is a factual occurrence. In the 1991 Thoroughbred & Classic Cars interview, Lamborghini said that after the clutch problems endured, “I decided to talk to Enzo Ferrari. I had to wait for him a very long time. ‘Ferrari, your cars are rubbish!’ I complained. Il Commendatore was furious. “Lamborghini, you may be able to drive a tractor but you will never be able to handle a Ferrari Properly.’ This was the point when I finally decided to make a perfect car.” Later re-tellings of the story center around several basic points: Lamborghini visited Ferrari; proceeded to challenge, demand improvements, or deride Ferrari; and finally was dismissed as a mere tractor manufacturer. Whether the industrialist’s spite was enough of a reason to enter the carmaker business, or if the exchange inspired further business interests or merely served as an anecdote, is unknown. Sackey writes that the economic motives for entering the high-profit-margin sports car business far outweighed Lamborghini’s personal sentiments. In the T&CC interview, Lamborghini notes that “Ferrari never spoke to me again. He was a great man, I admit, but it was so very easy to upset him.”

Long live the Lamborghini…