Factors and Indicators of Business Growth
Senior 1 · Entrepreneurship
Factors and Indicators of Business Growth
Lesson 5 of 5
25 min
Iradukunda runs a hair salon in Musanze. She records her sales every month in a spreadsheet on her phone. Some months go up, some go down a little, and she wants to know two things: is the business growing overall, and roughly what can she expect next month, so that she can decide whether to hire another stylist? (An illustrative case.)
| Month (2026) | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales (Frw thousands) | 410 | 425 | 455 | 450 | 480 | 505 | 500 | 530 |
Her cousin says: "Ask an AI." Her teacher says: "First learn to read the trend yourself." They are both right.
Definition
Trend: the general direction in which figures move over time (up, down or level), ignoring small ups and downs.
Example: the salon's sales dip in April and July but trend upwards.
Definition
Trendline: a straight (or smooth) line drawn through data on a chart to show its trend. A spreadsheet can draw one automatically.
Example: the dashed line on the chart below.
Definition
Forecast: an estimate of a future value, based on past data and the trend.
Example: about Frw 544,000 of sales in September.
Definition
Artificial intelligence (AI): computer systems that do tasks which normally need human intelligence, such as finding patterns in data, answering questions in ordinary language or recognising images.
Example: an AI chat assistant that reads a list of sales figures and describes the trend.
A quick method is to find the average change per month and add it to the last value:
=FORECAST.LINEAR(9, B2:B9, A2:A9) in an empty cell.Worked example 1: the salon's trend and forecast
Step 1: average change per month. There are 8 months, so 7 changes:
Step 2: forecast for September. thousand francs.
Step 3: compare with the spreadsheet. The trendline rises about 16.6 thousand a month and FORECAST.LINEAR gives about 544 thousand. The two methods agree: September's sales should be about Frw 545,000, if nothing changes.
Step 4: decide. Sales are growing steadily by about 4% a month . If a new stylist would cost less than the extra sales she brings in, hiring now is reasonable.
An AI chat assistant can do the same analysis from a plain-language question. Iradukunda types:
"Here are my salon's monthly sales for January to August 2026, in thousands of francs: 410, 425, 455, 450, 480, 505, 500, 530. What is the trend, and what might September's sales be?"
A good answer describes an upward trend of about 17 thousand francs a month with small dips in April and July, and a September forecast of roughly 545 thousand, with a warning that a forecast is only an estimate. But AI answers are not always right, so you must be able to check them.
| AI can help to… | But AI cannot… |
|---|---|
| Spot patterns quickly in long lists of figures | Know about events that are not in the data: a new salon next door, a road closure, a lockdown such as COVID-19's in 2020 |
| Draw charts and explain them in plain language | Guarantee its numbers: it can make up figures or do a calculation wrongly, and still sound confident |
| Compare products, branches or months | Give good answers from bad data: wrong or missing records give wrong results |
| Suggest questions the owner had not thought of | Take responsibility: the owner makes the decision and lives with it |
Worked example 2: checking an AI's answer
A second AI assistant replies: "Sales grew by 29.3% from January to August, so September's sales will be thousand francs."
Check the first claim. . Correct.
Check the second claim. 29.3% is the growth over seven months, not one. Applying it to a single month predicts a jump of 155 thousand francs, nine times the usual monthly rise of about 17 thousand. The forecast is wrong; about 545 thousand is sensible.
Lesson: the AI's arithmetic was right, but its reasoning was not. Always ask whether an answer fits the pattern you can see.
Warning
Protect people's data, and check every number. Never paste customers' names, phone numbers or MoMo details into an AI tool: the information leaves your phone and may be stored. Use totals instead. And treat an AI's answer like advice from a stranger: useful, but to be checked with a calculator and common sense before you act on it.
Tip
AI is an assistant, not the boss. Let it do the fast work (sorting, charting, first ideas), then do the thinking yourself: check the figures, add what you know about the business, and make the decision.
Kevin Stratvert, "Forecasting in Excel Tutorial" (about 11 minutes). Watch for how a spreadsheet adds a trendline and makes a forecast; Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc work in a similar way.
Collect at least six values that change over time: your savings each week, the school canteen's daily sales, or the price of a kilogram of beans at your market each week. Draw a line chart by hand or in a spreadsheet, work out the average change, and forecast the next value. If you can use an AI assistant, ask it the same question and check its answer against yours.
Practice
Further reading
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the Musanze salon case, the table, the chart, the spreadsheet steps, the sample AI answers, the worked examples, the activity and the practice items. All figures are illustrative (2026).
