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5 Practical Use Cases Sankey Diagram

Sankey diagrams can be used for five practical use cases: 1. Visualizing the flow of food from production to consumption to analyze efficiency and reduce waste. 2. Analyzing customer journeys, such as through advertising campaigns, to optimize processes. 3. Visualizing hierarchical company data, such as sales by country/city/region, to improve performance. 4. Increasing car engine efficiency by visualizing energy flow from combustion to movement. 5. Replacing machine learning to analyze patterns in datasets like marketing responses.

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Ravi
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155 views

5 Practical Use Cases Sankey Diagram

Sankey diagrams can be used for five practical use cases: 1. Visualizing the flow of food from production to consumption to analyze efficiency and reduce waste. 2. Analyzing customer journeys, such as through advertising campaigns, to optimize processes. 3. Visualizing hierarchical company data, such as sales by country/city/region, to improve performance. 4. Increasing car engine efficiency by visualizing energy flow from combustion to movement. 5. Replacing machine learning to analyze patterns in datasets like marketing responses.

Uploaded by

Ravi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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5 PRACTICAL USE CASES

FOR SANKEY DIAGRAMS


INTRODUCTION

Sankey diagrams not only look visually appealing but also help uncover
valuable insights. But visualization is actually helpful if it is used for a
certain purpose. So let's find out five practical use cases for Sankey
diagrams.

VISUALIZING THE FLOW OF FOOD

Since the core purpose of the Sankey diagram is to show the flow
between two elements/dimensions, we can use it to visualize the loss at
each stage of the food supply chain. From primary availability to
consumption, the food passes several stages, such as retail availability
and consumer availability. And losses such as farm to retail losses,
cooking loss, uneaten food, etc. occur as the food flows from primary
availability to when it's finally consumed.

We can build a Sankey chart to see what percentage of losses occur at


each stage and how much food is actually consumed. This can help
analyze the efficiency of the production of food, its processing, and
consumption. So you see Sankey diagram helps a lot in addressing
food losses and food waste issues.
ANALYZING THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Another great practical use of the Sankey diagram is to measure the


customer journey, which can then help you optimize it. For example,
you can use the Sankey diagram to analyze the customer journey in
PPC advertisements. You can build a Sankey chart that shows the
percentage of match type that happens between the search query and
a particular keyword on the left side and device type on the right-hand
side with impressions in between.

This diagram can help gain useful insights into which keywords are
generating the most traffic and where the traffic is coming from.
Campaign managers can analyze how much a campaign missed out
on opportunity and then make efforts to capture the remaining
percentage.

Sankey diagram can also be used to analyze the customer journey


through time. For instance, a Sankey diagram of a car rental service
can be used to analyze which cars customers are renting. Similarly,
these diagrams can be built for any organization offering a product or
company to show paths customers took. Managers can then predict
the path the customers are most likely to take and suggest product
recommendations.
VISUALIZING THE HIERARCHICAL DATASET OF A COMPANY

If a company has a hierarchical dataset, it can build a Sankey diagram


to make useful observations. For example, the dataset used in this
article (hyperlink to the tutorial on Sankey diagram in tableau) is
hierarchy type sales data (Country - City –Region-Segment) of African
mobile.

The Sankey diagram built in this tutorial shows the flow from each
segment over to each region and sales. Now, with this diagram,
managers can analyze which country has the most number of cities
that contribute to sales, which city or country is contributing to sales in
each segment, etc. They can then take steps to improve sales.
INCREASING THE ENERGY EFFICIENCY OF CAR ENGINES

Since the inappropriate use of energy by car engines results in huge


energy loss, Sankey diagrams can be built to visualize the flow of
energy, from combustion to mobility, in cars. We can analyze how
much energy is actually used for powering the car and other
accessories and how much energy is lost. This analysis can then help
improve the energy efficiency of car engines.

USING SANKEY DIAGRAM INSTEAD OF MACHINE LEARNING

Machine learning is usually used to learn patterns between two or


more input columns and one output column. In some cases, we can
use the Sankey diagram to replace machine learning. For example, let's
say we have a dataset of bank direct marketing campaigns with
categories like job, education, age, etc., of customers and a reponse
column showing customers' responses with 'yes' or 'no.' We would
normally use machine learning on this dataset to learn which
customers are more likely to respond to direct marketing than others.

But, we can also build a Sankey diagram of this dataset with different
categories such as age, marital status, education, etc., and the response
column as the last column. With this Sankey diagram, you can analyze
whether the customers who respond to marketing campaigns are
single, married, engaged, or in a relationship. Similarly, you can see
which age group responds the most to your marketing campaign.

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