Which approach enables the comparison of current sales data with historical data within a single story?

The approach that enables the comparison of current sales data with historical data within a single story is time series analysis. This method involves collecting data points at different times to evaluate trends, patterns, and changes over time, thus allowing analysts to visualize and interpret sales data across various time periods.

Time series analysis facilitates decision-making by showcasing how current sales performances stack up against historical figures. Users can easily spot seasonal trends, cyclical movements, and anomalies, which leads to better-informed forecasts and strategic business decisions. By leveraging this analysis within SAP Analytics Cloud, users can create visualizations that effectively compare and contrast current and past data in a single story, making it a powerful tool for understanding performance variations and planning.

Other methodologies, while useful for specific analysis types, do not directly support this chronological comparison in the same way. Data versioning deals with tracking changes to datasets over time but does not facilitate time-based comparisons. Benchmarking focuses on measuring a company's performance against industry standards, while variance analysis is used to understand the difference between planned and actual performance, primarily in a budgetary context. These methods serve important analytical purposes but do not provide the structured time-based comparison that time series analysis does.