By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
  • Analytics
    AnalyticsShow More
    data Analytics instagram stories
    Data Analytics Helps Marketers Make the Most of Instagram Stories
    15 Min Read
    analyst,women,looking,at,kpi,data,on,computer,screen
    What to Know Before Recruiting an Analyst to Handle Company Data
    6 Min Read
    AI analytics
    AI-Based Analytics Are Changing the Future of Credit Cards
    6 Min Read
    data overload showing data analytics
    How Does Next-Gen SIEM Prevent Data Overload For Security Analysts?
    8 Min Read
    hire a marketing agency with a background in data analytics
    5 Reasons to Hire a Marketing Agency that Knows Data Analytics
    7 Min Read
  • Big Data
  • BI
  • Exclusive
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Software
Search
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: Visualize Your Data
Share
Notification Show More
Aa
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
Aa
Search
  • About
  • Help
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
SmartData Collective > Big Data > Data Visualization > Visualize Your Data
Data Visualization

Visualize Your Data

MIKE20
Last updated: 2011/08/15 at 8:52 AM
MIKE20
5 Min Read
SHARE

Many organizations continue to struggle implementing BI tools. We all know the usual suspects:

Contents
Simon Says: Visualization and Interactivity are KeyFeedback

Many organizations continue to struggle implementing BI tools. We all know the usual suspects:

  • bad data
  • the tendency of organizations to over-customize, causing problems down the road
  • the difficult of getting buy-in on standard definitions
  • other IT priorties
  • vendor “challenges”
  • end user unwillingness to let go of old standbys.

As a result, relatively few executives and decision makers in large organizations have access to simple yet effective dashboards. Lacking accurate and timely data–and a means to comprehend it, they often make suboptimal decisions. Call these errors of commission. What’s more, they’ll often fail to make any decision when they should. Call these errors of omission.

More Read

data visualization for small business

Data Visualization Boosts Business Scalability with Sales Mapping

5 Best Practices for Extracting, Analyzing, and Visualizing Data
10 Important Ways Data Visualization Can Benefit Your Content Strategy
How to Bring Presentation Data to Life with Powered Template
From Raw Data to Visualization: Marvel Social Graph Analysis

Ironically, small business owners like me can quickly visualize their data and drill down as needed. Consider two dashboards I use on a daily basis. The first is from my website, run on the WordPress platform:

And here’s the dashboard for my Kickstarter project for my fourth book, The Age of the Platform:


I don’t show examples of my own dashboards to be boastful. Rather, I just want to prove that it doesn’t take a great deal of time or money be able to interact with and visualize your data. We see here that being small can be a major advantage, especially since pre-built dashboards come with many products and web-based services these days.

Going the Pre-Built Route

There’s no panacea to the aforementioned data and organizational problems. However, today businesses of all types are taking a shortcut by purchasing and deploying Prebuilt Analytic Applications (PAAs). PAAs can allow end users to better understand their data. In theory, they can then make superior decisions.

PAAs represent a legitimate alternative to custom-built BI tools. These ready-made, off-the-shelf applications come pre-loaded with industry-specific metrics and definitions. Once linked to an organization’s systems, PAAs can provide meaningful insight into micro and macro trends.

PAAs are increasingly being deployed in industries such as banking, insurance health care, and retail in a number of different lines of business. Implementations have run the gamut, including customer service, human resources, finances, and sales.

Let’s look at HR for a moment. PAAs exist that allow organizations to do the following:

  • Quickly identify their best employees–as well as those who are not meeting expectations.
  • Track progress of employees as they are trained and advanced within the organization.
  • Allow managers to monitor how employees are performing against a vast array of key metrics.
  • Spot disturbing trends in absenteeism, sickness, and employee turnover.
  • Identify emerging payroll-related issues, such as excessive overtime in a department, store, or division.

This isn’t rocket science here. It’s easier to spot outliers on a graph or chart than it is on a plain-text report or a spreadsheet.

Simon Says: Visualization and Interactivity are Key

It doesn’t matter if your organization uses a PAA, a best-of-breed and customized BI tool such as IBM Cognos, or an open source BI tool such as Pentaho. Make sure that you have a dashboard. They are becoming increasingly useful and important. After all, how realistic is it to expect your employees to make accurate decisions with a morass of spreadsheets, databases, and static reports–especially when those items are static and non-interactive? Even free and low-cost tools such as Tableau can provide enormously valuable insights into your company’s data. Don’t believe me? Check out this interactive dashboard for bankers.

It doesn’t make sense that small business owners like me can more easily visualize and interact with their data than organizations with hundreds of times as many resources. Look at different options to change this.

Feedback

What say you?

MIKE20 August 15, 2011
Share This Article
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn
Share

Follow us on Facebook

Latest News

smart home data
7 Mind-Blowing Ways Smart Homes Use Data to Save Your Money
Big Data
ai low code frameworks
AI Can Help Accelerate Development with Low-Code Frameworks
Artificial Intelligence
data Analytics instagram stories
Data Analytics Helps Marketers Make the Most of Instagram Stories
Analytics
data breaches
How Hospital Security Breaches Devastate Local Communities
Policy and Governance

Stay Connected

1.2k Followers Like
33.7k Followers Follow
222 Followers Pin

You Might also Like

data visualization for small business
Data Visualization

Data Visualization Boosts Business Scalability with Sales Mapping

7 Min Read
big data visualization
Data Visualization

5 Best Practices for Extracting, Analyzing, and Visualizing Data

6 Min Read
Data Visualization
Data Visualization

10 Important Ways Data Visualization Can Benefit Your Content Strategy

13 Min Read
Data Visualisation
Data Visualization

How to Bring Presentation Data to Life with Powered Template

8 Min Read

SmartData Collective is one of the largest & trusted community covering technical content about Big Data, BI, Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, IoT & more.

giveaway chatbots
How To Get An Award Winning Giveaway Bot
Big Data Chatbots Exclusive
data-driven web design
5 Great Tips for Using Data Analytics for Website UX
Big Data

Quick Link

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Go to mobile version
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Lost your password?