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Business value in visualising data


Johannesburg, 03 Nov 2017

It is a well-known fact that the amount of data being created each year continues to grow by leaps and bounds. This is true for human-generated to digitally-generated data. According to estimates by the Arizona State University, the volume of business data worldwide, across all companies, doubles every 1.2 years (university).

However, in its raw state, the data is not easily consumed to provide much-needed insights. It therefore needs to be prepared in order to be consumable. After being gathered, it then needs to be organised, made interpretable, and then analysed and acted on to provide any meaningful value.

Figure 1 below shows the six core stages of the data management life cycle. This article will focus mostly on steps two and three, as these are core to the subject matter under discussion.

Figure 1 (http://hsls.libguides.com/datamanagement)
Figure 1 (http://hsls.libguides.com/datamanagement)

Good business intelligence (BI) means being able to tell a good story. Ultimately, solid BI should allow those who view it to understand what is happening, make an informed decision, or take a necessary action. Key among the core values at SOIT Business Solutions in supporting the decision-making process is ensuring the integrity of the data is above board, before preparation.

Since we all know that a picture is worth a thousand words, data visualisation is critical to telling a good story. The human brain contains over 20 billion neurons dedicated to analysing visual information, thus representing a major element of the human cognitive engine. We should therefore be leveraging off this function in representing data to ensure the message is delivered effectively the first time around.

Data visualisation allows companies to intuitively explore and present data to reveal insights at a glance by providing agile visualisations that enable a real-time understanding of data, both big and small. It is therefore important for companies to look at the visualisation layer and not forget about the critical "data" piece of data visualisation. It also empowers decision-makers to see connections between multi-dimensional data sets and provides new ways to interpret data through the use of heat maps, fever charts, and other rich graphical representations.

Some of the key benefits that data visualisation offers are: (www.data-informed.com)

1. Absorb information in new and more constructive ways

A May 2013 survey by Aberdeen Group finds managers in organisations that use visual data discovery tools are 28% more likely to find timely information than those who rely solely on managed reporting and dashboards. Moreover, 48% of BI users at companies that use visual data discovery are able to find the information they need without the help of IT staff all or most of the time.

2. Visualise relationships and patterns between operational and business activities.

In today's highly competitive business environment, finding the correlations among operating conditions and business performance has never been more important. A multi-faceted view of business and operating dynamic through data visualisation affords key decision-makers insights by providing the ability to make correlations that identify the root cause of the problem and act quickly to resolve it.

3. Identify and act on emerging trends faster

The volume of data that companies are able to gather about customers and market conditions can provide business leaders with insights into new revenue and business opportunities, presuming they can spot the opportunities in the mountain of data.

4. Manipulate and interact directly with data

One of the greatest strengths of data visualisation is how it brings actionable insights to the surface. The dynamic and interactive ability of data visualisation tools allows users to slide and dice the data, unlike one-dimensional tables and charts that can only be viewed in a static mode.

In conclusion, SOIT Business Solutions' position on data visualisation tools is an agnostic approach. It uses many data visualisation tools according to the context of the story it is telling, and has also adopted a fit-for-purpose approach. Many of these tools mirror each other, but the choice to use one over the other is largely dependent on ease of use, pricing and context. In addition, data visualisation goes hand-in-hand with advanced analytics.

The most common pitfalls made by data practitioners, in the company's experience, is attempting to use data visualisation tools without understanding the methodology behind them, thus misrepresenting the story.

Join SOIT Business Solutions for its Data Analytics 101 course, and it will equip you with the necessary skills.

A few examples of good data visualisation tools are provided in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2.
Figure 2.

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Editorial contacts

Daniel Gombe
Sochin Technologies
daniel@soit.co.za