“The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.” – John Tukey

Businesses that want to make the most of their data often struggle with managing large volumes of information. Even though there’s a lot of data available, many organizations find it challenging to uncover valuable insights, which means that a lot of data remains unused. This lack of actionable intelligence hampers strategic decision-making and inhibits business growth.

The key is to use effective data visualization. By converting raw data into clear, visual formats, businesses can easily spot trends and outliers and make well-informed decisions. Data visualization tools and techniques offer the clarity needed to transform complex data sets into actionable insights, ultimately improving decision-making processes and driving business success. This article explores how using data visualization can assist businesses in overcoming the challenges of data overload and tapping into the full potential of their information.

Understanding the Power of Data Visualization

Data visualization refers to the graphical representation of information and data. Using visual elements like charts, graphs, and maps, data visualization tools provide an accessible way to see and understand trends, outliers, and patterns in data. This approach makes complex data more comprehensible, allowing users to grasp intricate details quickly and effectively.

Data visualization is pivotal in business analytics because it transforms complex data sets into a visual format that is easier to interpret. For executives, clear and concise data visualizations facilitate quicker decision-making, enhance communication, and support the identification of actionable insights. This ability to present data visually is essential for driving informed strategies and achieving business objectives.

Key Data Visualization Tools for Business Leaders

With the increasing volume and complexity of data, effective analytic dashboards and data visualization tools are essential for interpreting information accurately and efficiently. These tools help make data more accessible, understandable, and usable for strategic decision-making.

When it comes to top tools for business analytics, Tableau stands out for its robust visualization capabilities. It allows users to create various interactive and shareable dashboards, making it easier for stakeholders to interpret complex data. Microsoft Power BI is another excellent option, integrating seamlessly with other Microsoft products and offering real-time dashboard updates. AWS QuickSight, a scalable, serverless, embeddable, machine learning-powered business intelligence service, is also noteworthy for its versatility and power.

Integrating these tools into business systems significantly enhances visualization capabilities. Executives benefit from real-time insights, enabling them to make informed, data-driven decisions quickly. These tools’ advanced analytics features, such as predictive analytics and machine learning, further drive business intelligence. This combination of real-time data and advanced analytics helps organizations uncover deeper insights, spot trends, and respond proactively to market changes.

Techniques to Maximize the Impact of Data Visualization

Maximizing the impact of data visualization involves selecting the proper techniques to present information clearly and effectively. Effective visualization techniques can transform complex data sets into easily understandable visuals, aiding in better decision-making and communication. By choosing the appropriate method, businesses can ensure that their data is seen, comprehended, and utilized effectively.

Among the most effective visualization techniques are:

Dashboards: Centralize key metrics and KPIs for quick, at-a-glance updates. Dashboards provide a comprehensive view of critical data points, allowing executives to monitor real-time performance and make swift decisions.
Infographics: Combine graphics and data to tell a compelling story. They are beneficial for summarizing complex data in a visually appealing and easily digestible format.
Interactive Charts: Allow users to engage with the data, customize their views, and explore different aspects of the information.

Selecting the appropriate visualization technique depends on the data type and the intended audience. For instance, dashboards are ideal for real-time monitoring and operational decision-making. Infographics are perfect for presenting summaries of complex data to stakeholders in a visually engaging manner. Interactive charts are beneficial for detailed data analysis, enabling users to dive deeper into specific data sets.

By aligning the visualization method with the audience’s needs and the data’s nature, businesses can enhance the clarity and effectiveness of their data presentations.

Spotting Trends with Advanced Data Analysis Tools

Advanced tools can be essential for identifying trends and patterns not immediately apparent in raw data. These tools offer sophisticated capabilities that enhance the depth and accuracy of data analysis, enabling businesses to gain more nuanced insights.

Key advanced tools include:

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning: Offers robust machine learning capabilities to identify trends and patterns, allowing businesses to predict future outcomes and make data-driven decisions.
AWS SageMaker: Simplifies the process of building, training, and deploying machine learning models, making advanced analytics more accessible and efficient for organizations.

Businesses can uncover deeper insights by integrating AI and machine learning with data visualization tools. For example, predictive models can forecast future trends, enabling proactive decision-making. This integration allows companies to go beyond surface-level analysis and understand the underlying factors driving their data, leading to more informed and strategic decisions.

Latest Trends in Data Visualization

Current data visualization trends are revolutionizing how businesses interpret and utilize their data. Augmented analytics, for instance, enhances data analytics with AI and machine learning, making insights more accessible and actionable. This trend is making it easier for non-technical users to harness the power of advanced analytics.

Another significant trend is storytelling with data, which uses narrative techniques to make data more relatable and engaging. This approach helps stakeholders understand the context and significance of the data, leading to more informed decision-making. According to Gartner, “By 2025, data stories will be the most widespread way of consuming analytics, and 75% of stories will be automatically generated using augmented analytics techniques”. By crafting narratives around data, businesses can effectively communicate complex information in a way that is both compelling and easy to grasp.

Looking ahead, future data visualization technologies will likely focus on more advanced AI integrations, offering even more precise and actionable insights. As AI technology continues to evolve, we can expect visualization tools to become even more intuitive, providing real-time, automated insights and predictions. These advancements will further empower businesses to leverage their data for strategic advantage.

12 Ways to Enhance Decision-Making with Data Visualization

From real-time dashboards to predictive analytics, various visualization techniques can help you gain deeper insights, spot trends, and make more informed decisions. The following are 12 essential ways to enhance decision-making with data visualization, highlighting the tools you can use and their benefits.

1. Utilizing Real-Time Dashboards

Tools: Microsoft Power BI, AWS QuickSight, Tableau
Benefit: Real-time dashboards enable quick decision-making by integrating real-time data and displaying KPIs and metrics relevant to business operations.

By providing an at-a-glance performance overview, executives can monitor critical data and respond to changes swiftly. According to one study by IDC, businesses that use real-time analytics are five times more likely to make timely decisions. Read about 6 Creative Ways to Use Business Intelligence Dashboards.

2. Implementing Predictive Analytics

Tools: Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, AWS SageMaker, IBM SPSS Statistics
Benefit: Predictive analytics uses models to forecast future trends, allowing for proactive rather than reactive strategies.

By anticipating potential outcomes, businesses can make informed decisions that position them ahead of market shifts. This forward-thinking approach mitigates risks and capitalizes on emerging opportunities, ensuring sustained growth and competitive advantage.

3. Geographic Mapping

Tools: Microsoft Power BI (with ArcGIS), Google Maps API, Tableau
Benefit: Geographic mapping visualizes geographic data to identify regional performance patterns and market opportunities. This technique helps businesses understand spatial relationships and regional trends, aiding in strategic planning and resource allocation.

By pinpointing areas of high performance and identifying underperforming regions, companies can tailor their strategies to optimize market potential and drive targeted growth.

4. Comparative Analysis

Tools: Tableau, Microsoft Excel, AWS QuickSight
Benefit: Comparative analysis employs side-by-side comparisons of data sets to spot trends and anomalies. This method allows businesses to evaluate performance across different periods, business units, or other categories, identifying areas for improvement or investment.

By clearly visualizing differences and similarities, companies can make more informed decisions and adjust strategies to enhance overall performance.

5. Trend Lines in Time Series Data

Tools: Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Google Charts
Benefit: Trend lines in time series data identify growth, declines, and cyclical patterns over specified periods.

By visualizing these trends, businesses can better understand historical performance and predict future outcomes. This insight helps in strategic planning, allowing companies to proactively capitalize on growth opportunities and address potential downturns. According to a study by McKinsey, organizations that effectively use time series analysis can improve forecasting accuracy by up to 20%.

6. Correlation Analysis

Tools: R (with ggplot2), Python (with Matplotlib), Microsoft Excel
Benefit: Correlation analysis uses scatter plots to find correlations between variables impacting business outcomes.

By visualizing the relationships between different data points, businesses can identify key factors that influence performance. Understanding these correlations helps make data-driven decisions that optimize strategies and improve overall results. For example, uncovering a solid correlation between marketing spend and sales growth can lead to more effective budget allocations.

7. Hierarchical Tree Structures

Tools: D3.js, Microsoft Power BI, AWS QuickSight
Benefit: Hierarchical tree structures break down complex data into digestible and actionable pieces. This visualization technique organizes data in a hierarchical format, making it easier to understand relationships and dependencies within the dataset.

By simplifying complex information, hierarchical tree structures enable businesses to identify key insights and make informed decisions quickly. This method is beneficial for analyzing organizational structures, project plans, or any data set with multiple levels of detail.

8. Using Animated Visualizations

Tools: Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Google Data Studio
Benefit: Animated visualizations show changes over time, making dynamic data easier to understand.

By animating data points, trends, and patterns become more apparent, allowing users to grasp the evolution of data at a glance. This technique is especially useful for presentations and reports, as it engages the audience and enhances the storytelling aspect of the data. Animated visualizations can reveal insights that static charts might miss, providing a clearer picture of how data evolves and impacts business outcomes.

9. Incorporating User-Interaction Features

Tools: Tableau, QlikView, Microsoft Power BI
Benefit: User-interaction features allow users to explore data subsets and view relevant information.

By incorporating interactive elements into visualizations, businesses can enable users to drill down into specific data points, customize their views, and uncover insights tailored to their needs. This interactive approach enhances engagement and makes data analysis more accessible, ensuring users can find and focus on the most relevant information for their decision-making processes.

10. Performance Scorecards

Tools: Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, SAP BusinessObjects
Benefit: Performance scorecards provide a quick overview of the organization’s health and achievements against goals.

By compiling key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics into a single, easy-to-read format, scorecards allow executives to monitor progress and identify areas needing attention. This comprehensive view helps ensure that strategic objectives are met and facilitates timely adjustments to improve overall performance.

11. Utilizing Dashboards for Benchmarking

Tools: Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, AWS QuickSight
Benefit: Dashboards for benchmarking include industry benchmarks or competitor data to gauge performance.

By comparing your company’s metrics against external standards, you can identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. This benchmarking process provides valuable context, helping businesses understand their competitive position and make data-driven decisions to enhance performance and achieve strategic goals.

12. Storytelling with Data

Tools: Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Adobe Analytics
Benefit: Storytelling with data crafts narratives around data, making complex data relatable and persuasive to stakeholders.

By using a series of visualizations to tell a cohesive story, businesses can highlight key insights, trends, and outcomes engagingly. This approach helps communicate the significance of the data, making it easier for stakeholders to understand and act on the information presented. Effective data storytelling can drive better decision-making and foster a deeper connection with the data.

Implementing Data Visualization in Your Organization

The first step is to assess your current data needs by evaluating the existing data landscape and identifying areas for improvement. This assessment helps pinpoint gaps and opportunities in your data strategy. Next, choose the right tools that align with your business needs and goals. Selecting the appropriate data visualization tools ensures that you have the capabilities required to transform raw data into actionable insights. Training your team is also crucial; ensure they are proficient in using these tools to maximize their effectiveness. Continuous learning and skill development will help your team stay updated with the latest features and best practices.

Integrating data visualization into an organization can present several challenges, but these can be effectively managed with the right strategies. One common challenge is resistance to change. Employees may hesitate to adopt new tools and processes, hindering implementation.

To overcome this, it’s important to demonstrate the value of data visualization through pilot projects and success stories that highlight tangible benefits. Another challenge is ensuring data quality. Inaccurate or incomplete data can undermine visualization efforts. At WCI, we help businesses overcome challenges and seamlessly integrate data visualization into a business’s operations, providing comprehensive training and support. This approach ensures that your data visualization efforts are effective, impactful, and aligned with your business objectives.

Transform Your Decision-Making with Data Visualization

Data visualization is a powerful tool that can revolutionize how businesses make decisions. By leveraging the right tools and techniques, executives can uncover insights, spot trends, and drive informed strategies. Effective data visualization enables organizations to translate complex data into actionable intelligence, enhancing operational efficiency and strategic planning.

Ready to take your data visualization to the next level? Get a Free On-Site BI Architect Session with WCI today and unlock the full potential of your data for strategic growth and informed decision-making.

In today’s increasingly data-driven world, it’s more important than ever to have accessible ways to view and understand data and leverage it to make informed business decisions. Business analytics and data visualization provide insights into how things have historically played out, possibilities for new scenarios, and much more.

It’s no surprise businesses today have gravitated toward wanting to understand and leverage data visualization capabilities as an efficient way to help make sense of business-critical information and large sets of complex data at scale. Across all industries, business leaders today understand the importance of data and how to use it to its fullest potential – with the help of analytic dashboards and data visualization tools.

In this post, we’re breaking down analytics dashboards, data visualization, what each is, their advantages, and how they can impact your business in significant ways. Let’s dive in!

Why is data visualization important?

Business intelligence aims to collect and turn data into actionable information that fulfills operational and strategic objectives and supports a person’s decision-making. Why is it important? Because it helps people see, interact with, and better understand their organization’s data. Whether simple or complex, effective visualization and BI tools can bring everyone together on the same page, regardless of their expertise with data or daily interaction with these numbers.

Not only is the actual data necessary, but the ways BI display them are just as crucial. According to MIT, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. This means that the better we can represent complex numbers like big data, the easier it becomes for all stakeholders and employees to understand. Data visualization ultimately helps provide more people who use BI tools and analytics solutions with a familiar, engaging, interactive way to absorb information at a glance and understand the insights hidden beneath the numbers.

These data visualization tools and processes provide a quick and effective way to communicate and share information in an easy-to-read manner using visual information.

See data visualization services offered by WCI >>>

What is a data visualization dashboard?

Power BI Dashboard Example

Data visualization, also known as data exploration or Business Intelligence (BI), is often referred to as dashboarding. The data visualization industry has garnered much attention over recent years because of the easy-to-understand format in which complex data is delivered. Dashboards, in turn, present this complex data in an easy-to-interpret format.

These dashboards allow those viewing them to easily track, analyze, and display KPIs, metrics, and critical data points. A good dashboard helps both technical and non-technical users understand and interpret business intelligence to make more informed business decisions. They can actively participate in the analytics process by compiling data, visualizing trends or occurrences, and uncovering an objective view of performance metrics that can be immediately understood.

As BI has become a priority in the past decade, analytics solutions increasingly support newer options to visualize complex data sets and realize effective data visualization. Today, there are many types of data visualization to show and represent data in a more engaging way, with the exact output dependent on the analytics solution in question.

Make data easier to understand for all
Increase accessibility and collaboration on data points
Create quick overviews of complex numbers

The benefits of using BI dashboards

For many organizations, multiple tools are used to track KPIs and metrics, such as marketing platforms, email platforms, and CRM tools. Monitoring and analyzing the data from each tool individually takes a lot of time and effort to compile. It’s often disjointed and hard to put together, too.

The solution? A data visualization dashboard with a graphical representation of your data.

Dashboards are used for data visualization so that users can glimpse a bird’s eye view of the data from each of their business platforms in one centralized location, gaining the ability to understand what it means for the business quickly. Businesses can also drill down deeper into any aspect of the data with a few clicks. This is great for specific departments to compare year-over KPIs, projections, and more.

Who is Analytics Dashboards and Data Visualization for?

Analytics dashboards and data visualization can be helpful in many different industries and uses. Many in these fields utilize data visualization for business operations and data-driven decision-making:

Financial services
Healthcare
Life sciences
Manufacturing
Media and communications
Public and social impact
Retail and consumer goods
Technology
Transportation
Education
And more

Whether it’s a sales department manager in a media company wanting to make their quarterly KPI report more engaging for executives or a C-suite in finance using visualizations to represent their total investments, data visualization is equally essential.

How Do I Get Started With a Data Visualization Consultation?

Getting started is fast and easy with the experts at WCI.

Start with a Free On-site Discovery Session — During the discovery session, you will meet with a senior data analytics consultant from WCI and share your data challenges and goals with us.
Next, we Review the Proposed Solutions — After the session, we’ll summarize, evaluate, and provide a list of data management solutions and a project outline custom to you.
After that, we start the Solution Development Process — After the agreement is signed, WCI and your team work together to develop the right solution that meets your project goals and supports your business.
Lastly, we move into Training and Support — This is a key stage of our solution and crucial to your data.

Is your business leveraging data to its fullest potential?

Find out by spending half a day with someone who knows data management and can help you answer this question.

At WCI, our data visualization consultants help businesses organize, optimize, and analyze their business data in ways that help them make informed and profitable data-driven decisions. We help you tie together business data from your entire company to better inform and discover opportunities.

Start your data visualization journey today with WCI

Data is the most powerful tool a business can use to assess how its performance is doing, predict upcoming trends, and benchmark goals for the future. Business intelligence dashboards help companies interpret this often complex data and use it to forward their business.

While dashboards make it easy for a company to visualize its data by displaying metrics, graphs, gauges, maps, percentages, and comparisons of all the information streaming in and out of the company, being creative with how one leverages these numbers can be a challenge. By viewing data in new and innovative ways, companies can better understand where they stand and how to improve certain areas of the business.

We’re sharing 6 ways you can get started in this department.

1. Monitor metrics and KPIs from different departments

By using BI dashboards to assess metrics and KPIs across your entire business, you can better understand where opportunities for improvement exist. Siloed data can be hard to connect to other departments – but BI helps you see how everything is connected and plays into different areas.

Better understand the entire lifecycle of products, customer journeys, and more from start to finish with BI dashboards and connect the dots across all departments. Not only does your business better understand its customers and products, but you can cultivate more collaboration within your company in the same breath.

2. Use interactive filters

Interactive dashboards ensure the analysis experience is as efficient and intuitive as possible for anyone interpreting data. Static dashboards are no longer efficient to use. When building interactive dashboards, always keep interactivity in mind. This can be achieved using various filters that make your data easier to navigate and view.

Some common interactivity filters that you may want to try include the following:

Drill-downs: A drill-down filter allows you to visualize lower levels of hierarchical data all in one chart. The value of drill-downs lies in the fact that you don’t need to overcrowd your dashboards to get a more detailed view; you can do everything in one single chart.
Drill-through: Similar to a drill-down, a drill-through filter allows you to visualize additional, more detailed views about a specific KPI. The difference is that a drill-through will show you the additional data in a pop-up instead of the same chart.
Click-to-filter: Another useful filter to enhance interactivity is the click-to-filter. As its name suggests, to use this filter, all you need to do is click on a specific graph, and the entire dashboard will be filtered based on it. Applying it lets you explore your data and instantly extract deeper understandings.

The Linking feature allows you to use elements within a report (a table or chart) to act as input controls for a selection performed in another component (a table, chart, or the entire report). In addition, you can specify whether one or all of the element dimensions will be used as selectors.

3. Explore demographics and trends

Demographics and trends can be critical in simplifying complex data using charts, maps, infographics, and graphs. These visual data representations of things you may not immediately notice are that strictly numbers and text reports can be highly revealing. As a result, it becomes easier to detect trends, patterns, and data relations essential for decision-making. Leverage this real-time data to unveil actionable insights and visually represent trends that can change how your company is doing things for the better.

4. Use storytelling

While storytelling is a powerful best practice any business can use, regardless of industry or sector, it is particularly helpful when interpreting data. A compelling narrative will capture your audience’s attention and break down your findings in an inspirational and digestible way. In addition, storytelling with BI can show you new information about your customers and community you didn’t already know.

This approach will result in increased success across the board. Not only can you see trends and patterns within your data, but storytelling using a larger narrative can paint the big picture, which may help you visualize larger metrics, set long-term goals, and more.

5. Make data part of your everyday workflow

Creating a culture of using data and making decisions solely based on it will strongly encourage employees to use advanced BI solutions daily. Spreading data culture will help workers be aware of – and understand – BI products and their features. And they are then more likely to use these products effectively every day.

A company can also appoint a specific team to play the role of early adopters who can later share their knowledge and experiences with their peers on forums and in training. Announcing a successful BI project may also kindle other teams’ enthusiasm for new data solutions. Setting up a website for communication purposes can inform the rest of the staff and be part of a training program to help get them started with their BI-powered projects.

6. See a different perspective and discover new insights

Business intelligence dashboards come in different forms and cover various topics based on your industry. With an increasing number of chart types and more and more data being visualized, the possibilities of how the data can be displayed and the stories they can tell us are virtually endless. Finding a system that works for your needs and abilities is key.

Start getting creative with your data

At WCI, our business intelligence consulting helps companies organize, optimize, and analyze their business data to make more informed and profitable data-driven decisions. If you’re ready to tie together business data from your entire company to inform you better and discover opportunities, we’re here to help.

Get started today with our experts.

The Client

Mediant Health Resources specializes in providing IT subject matter solutions. Mediant’s focus is on driving value through data to improve performance and clinical outcomes. Mediant offers outstanding strategic consulting, project management, and training for many of the nation’s most widely respected healthcare organizations. Mediant Health Resources strives to improve its client’s software systems by providing exceptional IT consultants to both providers and payers.

Executive Summary

Mediant, since its inception, has conducted its day-to-day business (resource management, payroll, commissions, leave, reporting/dashboarding) using non-cloud-based technologies that made it difficult for users to access it remotely. Recently Mediant invested heavily in building a more robust cloud-based application to manage their business. Through the process of building a new application, most of their analytical capabilities were lost due to back-end structural changes

The Challenge

Excel Reporting

Mediant relied heavily on Excel for reporting and dashboarding, which is not easily scalable, lacks security, is not collaborative, and has become unstable

Outdated Architecture

Due to the outdated architecture, Mediant was seeking a fresh new approach to visualizing data and engaged WCI Consulting to help design and implement a solution.

Cost Effective

Understanding the issues that were needing to be resolved, we needed to be able to implement changes and come up with solutions that would last into the future but in a cost-effective way.

Solution

WCI worked closely with the Mediant team to develop a secure, scalable, and easily accessible financial and commissions application (FCA) in the AWS platform. FCA replaced the existing Excel-based data entry application. Some of the AWS services used to create FCA were RDS Postgres, API gateway, Incognito, Lambda, and Amplify. Utilizing WCI’s experience with creating cloud-based data and analytics platforms, AWS Quicksight was deployed to replace the existing outdated excel based approach. WCI felt this was an easy decision due to the simplicity of embedding visualizations into applications, its low cost compared to other visualization tools, its ability to scale, compatibility across multiple devices, and ease of use. Learn more about other companies that have overcome their business challenges thanks to WCI.

Results and Benefits

Because of the ease of employing AWS services, WCI was able to deliver a robust data and analytics platform quickly and at a lower cost than using traditional on-premises solutions.

This AWS solution allows Mediant Health Resources to securely access the FCA application from wherever they are, on any device, not just when they are in the office. This secure solution also allows for the quick adding of new users and the removal of users who are no longer entitled to access the data. Due to the scalability and stability of the platform, Mediant has increased efficiency in its interactions with FCA.

The old excel based data entry methods have been replaced with a responsive application that allows data to be entered in a fraction of the time. Processes that used to take hours have been reduced to minutes. In addition to improving the data entry process, Mediant can now view all analytical content directly in the FCA application using embedded Quicksight visualizations.

With Quicksight, the speed of developing visual content has significantly increased thanks to its ease of connecting to sources, creating content, and deploying that content. As a result, Mediant can deliver enhancements and expand its offerings at a much faster pace than they could on their previous platform.

See what more WCI clients have to say about our services.