DATA VISUALIZATION

Data visualization is the process of turning raw data into visual representations. Typically,
those visualizations are in the form of charts and graphs. The purpose of data visualization
is to make data easier and faster to understand, even by people who are not trained in
analytics or typically good with numbers. 
Data visualization is the practice of converting raw information (text, numbers, or
symbols) into a graphic format. The data is visualized with a clear purpose: to show
logical correlations between units, and define inclinations, tendencies, and patterns.
Depending on the type of logical connection and the data itself, visualization can be done
in a suitable format. 
Visualization is a shared language. Even without formal training, most people can
decipher the basic message behind something like a bar or pie chart. And when you couple
that innate understanding with knowledge of the business process or a small bit of
explanation from the analyst or presenter, the result is usually a “click” moment when
suddenly the numbers transition from the abstract. They begin to tell a story that the
viewer understands and can respond to. 

Many times, data visualization storytelling is only limited by the availability of good data
and the resources (whether people or software) to convert that data into pictures.
Some ways data visualization is used include: 
 To identify trends, such as whether sales are going down or certain processes are
not as productive as they were 
 To understand complex information quickly, such as when people view dashboards
to conduct an overall process health check 
 To identify patterns, such as whether the first Wednesday of the month always has
a spiked call volume 
 To identify relationships, such as whether the night production processes flounder
whenever a certain person is in charge 
 To examine a network, such as which audiences’ marketers should target with
their message  
 To analyze risks and address issues before they become problems 
 To communicate a story that gets the message across your organization quickly 
 To identify frequency, such as how often a product is purchased in a specific area 
Data visualization benefits
It lets us absorb large amounts of data at a glimpse of an eye
The human brain is programmed to think visually. It can process visuals 60,000 times
faster than text. Moreover, our brains can effectively process an image in just about 13
milliseconds. Think of how powerful it is seeing a graph, chart, or other visual
representation of data. It is way easier for the brain to process the data that way instead of
if you’re looking at a spreadsheet with rows of numbers. 

It speeds up the decision-making process

When your brain can process the data from a visual representation so fast, that means that
you can also make a data-driven decision faster. According to the Wharton School of
Business, data visualization can increase the ability to reach consensus quickly and move
towards action with 21%.  

It easily shows relationships between operations and results

Finding a correlation between the business operations and the market performance is vital
in the competitive space, so that’s why one of the main benefits of data visualization is
that it allows users to track the connection between both and act accordingly whenever
necessary. 

It can boost your revenue

Data visualization is all about finding the right information to help decision-makers make
the right business decisions. With the help of real-time data visuals, you and your team
will have the ability to perform advanced predictive analytics for different aspects of your
business. For instance, you’ll have access to up-to-date sales data that can help determine
marketing strategies or products popularity among target customers. 

Data visualization types

Types of visuals common in data analytics and visualization are:

Charts and Graphs

Charts and graphs are typically the first tools considered when discussing data
visualization storytelling. A line chart can tell the overall story of data trends over time
faster than narrative or numbers, and a bar chart can let the viewer quickly compare counts
or performance among different categories. Other charts and graphs that are used in data
visualization: 

 Box-and-whisker plots are a great way to quickly see whether there are outliers
dragging a process up or down. They’re also valuable when comparing averages,
standard deviations, and means of a process — analysis factors that are helpful
when answering questions such as “Are these two processes statistically the
same?” 
 Gantt charts provide a quick visualization of projects or processes across time.
They’re a great way to determine whether a complex schedule is realistic as
planned, discover where one process may run into or overlap with another, and
make predictions about (or see when) processes are running behind. 
 Scatter or dot plots use dots to provide a visual indication of every data point being
considered. These let you see potential trends, outliers, and groupings. For
example, if you’re tracking employee efficiency by day, each employee might be
represented by different colored dots. That makes it easy to see if one employee is
performing significantly above or below the pack. The plots also let you see if
some other element, such as day of the week, impacts overall performance. 
 Histograms show the distribution of your data. Histograms are statistical tools that
help in drawing probability conclusions. But as a visualization storytelling tool,
they can quickly demonstrate whether a process is hovering around the right mean
or whether outliers are skewing results for data or outcomes. 
 Pie charts are a quick way to illustrate what factors are at play in a process.
Various versions of pie charts are good if you need to see whether each part of the
whole is pulling its weight, or you want to see what factors are most important in a
process or outcome. 
 Control charts are specific types of line or dot charts that track the changes in a
process over time. These are statistical process control tools that can provide
information quickly about whether a process is “in control” or not. Control charts
are often parts of analysis dashboards because they can be used to determine if a
process is working as designed or if some manual intervention may be required to
make an improvement or correct an issue. 
 Tree-map charts are data visualization tools that show hierarchical data using
nested nodes (rectangles) of varying size and colour, making is easy to spot data
patterns or to compare data quantities. The treemap chart visualizations should be
 used in specific scenarios. They don’t solve the same problem that visualization
like a bar chart or a line chart would, but are instead meant for more complex,
richer data display.  

Tables
Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes charts and graphs don’t quite do
the job on their own when it comes to data storytelling. When you want to accompany
your visuals with a more specific look at the data behind them, tables are typically the best
way to display that information. That’s partly because everyone knows how to read the
column and row structure of tables. 
You might include tables in your data visualization reports when you know stakeholders
will want to see more granular information. You can also include them if you want to
specifically point out how one piece of data is skewing the conclusions that might be
drawn from a chart. 
 

Maps
Maps are an ideal way to display data that’s linked to location.
Which states do you ship to most? Which neighborhoods have the oldest houses and thus
might need certain types of services? Where in your facility are temperatures the coolest?
These are all questions that might be best answered with map data. 

Data visualization best practices

Understand the user first – The first thing that we want to do when creating a data visual
is to understand the user first, the person who is going to analyze your data story. Here are
a few questions that you can ask yourself or your users to help you get started:  

 Who will be using the visualization?  

 Who is my audience? Who am I trying to reach with my data story?  
 What questions should this visualization answer?  
 Do I need one visualization or more?  
 Is this an exploratory visualization or an explanatory visualization?  
Use the right chart type – Before you decide what chart type to use ask yourself: What
data story are you trying to tell with your visualization – do you want to compare data,
show data distribution, are you doing trend analysis or something else? After you have the
answer to that question, then you’ll easily choose the right chart type that will best tell
your data story.  
Proper use of color & text – Colors speak to us louder than words and communicate with
us on an emotional level. We may not realize it most of the time, but on a subconscious
level every color triggers a different emotion in people. 62 – 90% of a first impression is
based on how someone is recognizing color in the situation. So, the challenge here is to
use the power of color effectively to communicate the message you want to send. 
Avoid chart junk – Edward Tufte, the father of data visualization says ‘’Above all else
show the data’’. Don’t confuse your audience by adding unnecessary information or
graphics such as background imaginary, heavy grid lines, shading, etc. Always remember
that the simplest way is usually the best way to show your data.  
Be clear with your data – Use available visualization features to ensure clarity in your data
story.  

 Sorting alphabetically helps people find what they are looking for. 
 Sorting ascending helps tell the story of growth. 
 Sorting descending helps compare largest to smallest. 
 Descriptive and concise titles give reason for chart.  
 Trend lines clarify time series data sets.  
 Value overlays give details while analysing.  

Highlight what’s important – Focus people on what’s important about the story that

you’re trying to tell.  

 Series highlighting focuses the user to what they should look at.  

 Conditional formatting brings attention to key data points with diverging colour
palettes.  
 Annotations can support storytelling, either on a chart or with collaboration. 
 Outlier detection shows data ranges in or out of expected values.  
 Time series forecasting is an expected capability.  
 Linear regressions plots trend between dependent and independent variables.  
Use effective interactions – Using effective interactions is also part of the data
visualization best practices. Some of the things that users must-have the ability to do
include filtering data, link dashboards and visualizations to others to give users
deeper insights, and drill-down into comprehensive analysis.  
Use 3D wisely – 3D visualizations have a place if you are doing surface analysis, volatility
analysis or doing terrain research. Avoid 3D for standard business use.  
Use the right level of detail – Don’t use excessive details that don’t contribute to the data
story.  
Use the right scale – Avoid changing the scale the Y-Axis, as this tends to tell a different
story than the data should.  

Data visualization and big data

The increased popularity of big data and data analysis projects have made visualization
more important than ever. Companies are increasingly using machine learning to gather
massive amounts of data that can be difficult and slow to sort through, comprehend and
explain. Visualization offers a means to speed this up and present information to business
owners and stakeholders in ways they can understand.
Big data visualization often goes beyond the typical techniques used in normal
visualization, such as pie charts, histograms and corporate graphs. It instead uses more
complex representations, such as heat maps and fever charts. Big data visualization
requires powerful computer systems to collect raw data, process it and turn it into
graphical representations that humans can use to quickly draw insights.
While big data visualization can be beneficial, it can pose several disadvantages to
organizations. They are as follows:

 To get the most out of big data visualization tools, a visualization specialist must be
hired. This specialist must be able to identify the best data sets and visualization styles
to guarantee organizations are optimizing the use of their data.
 Big data visualization projects often require involvement from IT, as well as
management, since the visualization of big data requires powerful computer hardware,
efficient storage systems and even a move to the cloud.
 The insights provided by big data visualization will only be as accurate as the
information being visualized. Therefore, it is essential to have people and processes in
place to govern and control the quality of corporate data, metadata and data sources.
Common data visualization use cases

Common use cases for data visualization include the following:

Sales and marketing- Marketing teams must pay close attention to their sources of web
traffic and how their web properties generate revenue. Data visualization makes it easy to
see traffic trends over time as a result of marketing efforts.
Politics - A common use of data visualization in politics is a geographic map that displays
the party each state or district voted for.
Healthcare - Healthcare professionals frequently use choropleth maps to visualize
important health data. A choropleth map displays divided geographical areas or regions
that are assigned a certain color in relation to a numeric variable. Choropleth maps allow
professionals to see how a variable, such as the mortality rate of heart disease, changes
across specific territories.
Scientists - Scientific visualization, sometimes referred to in shorthand as SciVis, allows
scientists and researchers to gain greater insight from their experimental data than ever
before.
Finance - Finance professionals must track the performance of their investment decisions
when choosing to buy or sell an asset. Candlestick charts are used as trading tools and help
finance professionals analyze price movements over time, displaying important
information, such as securities, derivatives, currencies, stocks, bonds and commodities. By
analyzing how the price has changed over time, data analysts and finance professionals
can detect trends.
Logistics - Shipping companies can use visualization tools to determine the best global
shipping routes.
Data scientists and researchers - Visualizations built by data scientists are typically for
the scientist's own use, or for presenting the information to a select audience. The visual
representations are built using visualization libraries of the chosen programming
languages and tools. Data scientists and researchers frequently use open
source programming languages -- such as Python -- or proprietary tools designed for
complex data analysis. The data visualization performed by these data scientists and
researchers helps them understand data sets and identify patterns and trends that would
have otherwise gone unnoticed.
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Business intelligence (BI) combines business analytics, data mining, data visualization,
data tools and infrastructure, and best practices to help organizations to make more data-
driven decisions. 

BI is a broad term that encompasses data mining, process analysis,

performance benchmarking, and descriptive analytics. BI parses all the data generated by
a business and presents easy-to-digest reports, performance measures, and trends that
inform management decisions.

Business intelligence (BI) leverages software and services to transform data into
actionable insights that inform an organization’s strategic and tactical business decisions.
BI tools access and analyze data sets and present analytical findings in reports, summaries,
dashboards, graphs, charts and maps to provide users with detailed intelligence about the
state of the business.

Traditional Business Intelligence originally emerged in the 1960s as a system of sharing

information across organizations. It further developed in the 1980s alongside computer
models for decision-making and turning data into insights before becoming specific
offering from BI teams with IT-reliant service solutions. Modern BI solutions prioritize
flexible self-service analysis, governed data on trusted platforms, empowered business
users, and speed to insight. 

Over the past few years, business intelligence has evolved to include more processes and
activities to help improve performance. These processes include:
 Data mining: Using databases, statistics and machine learning to uncover trends in
large datasets.
 Reporting: Sharing data analysis to stakeholders so they can draw conclusions and
make decisions.
 Performance metrics and benchmarking: Comparing current performance data to
historical data to track performance against goals, typically using customized
dashboards.
 Descriptive analytics: Using preliminary data analysis to find out what happened.
  Querying: Asking the data specific questions, BI pulling the answers from the
datasets.
 Statistical analysis: Taking the results from descriptive analytics and further
exploring the data using statistics such as how this trend happened and why.
 Data visualization: Turning data analysis into visual representations such as charts,
graphs, and histograms to more easily consume data.
 Visual analysis: Exploring data through visual storytelling to communicate
insights on the fly and stay in the flow of analysis.
 Data preparation: Compiling multiple data sources, identifying the dimensions
and measurements, preparing it for data analysis.

Why business intelligence is important

Business intelligence can help companies make better decisions by showing present and
historical data within their business context. Analysts can leverage BI to provide
performance and competitor benchmarks to make the organization run smoother and more
efficiently. Analysts can also more easily spot market trends to increase sales or revenue.
Used effectively, the right data can help with anything from compliance to hiring efforts. 
A few ways that business intelligence can help companies make smarter, data-driven
decisions:

 Identify ways to increase profit

 Analyse customer behaviour
 Compare data with competitors
 Track performance
 Optimize operations
 Predict success
 Spot market trends
 Discover issues or problems

Benefits of Business Intelligence

There are many reasons why companies adopt BI. Many use it to support functions as
diverse as hiring, compliance, production, and marketing. BI is a core business value; it is
difficult to find a business area that does not benefit from better information to work
with.
Some of the many benefits companies can experience after adopting BI into their
business models include:

 Receive support for fact-based decision-making. BI tools help executives,

managers, and workers uncover insights that are relevant to their roles and areas of
responsibility – and use them to make decisions based on fact, not guesswork.
 Gain and maintain competitive advantage. With timely BI, organizations can
quickly identify and act on new trends and opportunities. They can also assess
their own capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses compared to competitors and use
that information to their advantage.
 Measure and track performance. BI dashboards make it easy to monitor key
performance indicators (KPIs), track progress against targets, and set alerts to
know where and when to focus improvement initiatives.      
 Identify and set benchmarks. BI solutions let organizations compare their processes
and performance metrics to industry standards, determine where improvements are
needed, set meaningful benchmarks, and monitor progress toward goals.
 Spot issues so they can be resolved. With BI, users can detect potential business
problems before they cause financial harm – such as manufacturing or distribution
bottlenecks, upward trends in customer churn, rising labor costs, and more.
 Operate more efficiently. Business intelligence systems allow everyone to spend
less time hunting down information, analyzing data, and generating reports. They
can also identify areas of overlap, duplication, or inefficiencies across departments
or subsidiaries in order to streamline operations.
 Make data and reporting accessible to everyone. BI software offers intuitive
interfaces, drag-and-drop reports, and role-based dashboards that team members
can use themselves – without the need for coding or other technical skills.
 Improve customer and employee experiences. BI users can mine data to spot
patterns in customer and employee behavior, analyze feedback, and use insights to
tailor and improve experiences.
 Increase revenue and profitability. Ultimately, business intelligence data leads to a
better understanding of where risks and opportunities exist, so that teams can make
profitable adjustments.
Business intelligence tools and systems
There are many different tools used in a business intelligence system. Here are some of
the most common:
 
BI reporting
BI reporting – presenting data and insights to end users in a way that is easy to understand
and act on – is fundamental to every business. Reports use summaries and visual elements
like charts and graphs to show users’ trends over time, relationships between variables,
and much more. They are also interactive, so users can slice and dice tables or drill deeper
into data as needed. Reports can be automated and sent out on a regular, predetermined
schedule – or ad hoc and generated on the fly.
 
Querying
Querying tools allow users to ask business questions and get answers through intuitive
interfaces. With modern querying tools, submitting a query can be as simple as asking
Google (or even Siri) a question – like “Where are shipping delays happening?”, “Did
quarterly sales meet their targets?”, or “How many widgets were sold yesterday?”
 
BI dashboards
Dashboards are one of the most popular BI tools. They use continually updated charts,
graphs, tables, and other types of data visualization to track pre-defined KPIs and other
business metrics – and provide an at-a-glance overview of performance in near-real time.
Managers and employees can use interactive features to customize which information they
want to view, drill into data for further analysis, and share results with other stakeholders.

Data visualization
The ability to visualize data and see it in context is one area where BI really shines.
Charts, graphs, maps, and other visual formats bring data to life in a way that can be
quickly and easily understood. Trends and outliers are more apparent. Colors and patterns
paint a picture of the story behind data in a way that columns and rows in a spreadsheet
never could. Data visualization is used throughout a BI system – in reports, as answers to
queries, and in dashboards.
 
OLAP
Online analytical processing (OLAP) is a technology that powers the data discovery
capabilities in many business intelligence systems. OLAP allows for fast,
multidimensional analysis across huge volumes of information stored in a data warehouse
or other central data store.   
 
Data preparation
Data preparation involves compiling multiple data sources and generally preparing it for
data analysis. Using a process called extract, transform, and load (ETL), raw data is
cleansed, categorized, and then loaded into a data warehouse. Good BI systems automate
many of these processes and allow for setting dimensions and measures.
 
Data warehouse
A data warehouse holds aggregated data from multiple sources that’s been cleansed and
formatted so that it can be accessed by BI and other analytics tools.

Examples of business intelligence in action

Today’s BI tools make it easier for everyone across an organization to access, analyze,
and act on current and historical data. Here are a few examples of BI use cases in different
business areas:

 BI for marketing: Marketers can use business intelligence to track campaign

results, such as e-mail open rates, click-through rates, and landing page
conversions – and then tailor future promotions to make them more effective.
 Business intelligence for finance: Finance departments can consolidate financial
data and monitor cash flow, margins, expenses, revenue streams, and more in real
time. They can keep a sharp eye on profitability and make decisions that improve
the bottom line.
 BI for HR: HR teams can use BI to monitor metrics such as time and attendance,
productivity rates, employee turnover, and engagement. They can use BI to make
better hiring decisions, identify training needs, optimize staff schedules, and more.
BUSINESS ANALYTICS
Business analytics (BA) is a set of disciplines and technologies for solving business
problems using data analysis, statistical models and other quantitative methods. It involves
an iterative, methodical exploration of an organization's data, with an emphasis on
statistical analysis, to drive decision-making.

Business analytics (BA) is the combination of skills, technologies, and practices used to
examine an organization's data and performance as a way to gain insights and make data-
driven decisions in the future using statistical analysis. The goal of BA is to narrow down
which datasets are useful and which can increase revenue, productivity, and efficiency.
Data-driven companies treat their data as a business asset and actively look for ways to
turn it into a competitive advantage. Success with business analytics depends on data
quality, skilled analysts who understand the technologies and the business, and a
commitment to using data to gain insights that inform business decisions.

How business analytics works

Before any data analysis takes place, BA starts with several foundational processes:

 Determine the business goal of the analysis.

 Select an analysis methodology.
 Get business data to support the analysis, often from various systems and sources.
 Cleanse and integrate data into a single repository, such as a data warehouse or data
mart.

Types of Analytics
When you use these four types of analytics, your data can be cleaned, dissected, and
absorbed in a way that makes it possible to create solutions for no matter what challenges
your organization may face.

1. Descriptive analytics: Interpretation of historical data and KPIs to identify trends

and patterns. This allows for a big picture look of what happened in the past and
what is happening currently using data aggregation and data mining techniques.

Many companies use descriptive analytics for a deeper look into the behaviour of
customers and how they can target marketing strategies to those customers. 
 2. Diagnostic analytics: Focuses on past performance to determine which elements
influence specific trends.

This is done using drill-down, data discovering, data mining, and correlation to
reveal the cause of specific events. Once an understanding is reached regarding the
likelihood of the event, and why an event may occur, algorithms are used for
classification and regression. 
3. Predictive analytics: Uses statistics to forecast and assess future outcomes using
statistical models and machine learning techniques. This often takes the results of
descriptive analytics to create models that determine the likelihood of specific
outcomes.

This type is often used by sales and marketing teams to forecast opinions of
specific customers based on social media data.
4. Prescriptive analytics: Uses past performance data to recommend how to handle
similar situations in the future. Not only does this type of business analytics
determine outcomes, but it can also recommend the specific actions that need to
occur to have the best possible result.

Deciding which method to go with will depend on the business situation at hand.
Process of Business Analytics

 Elements of business analytics

Data mining

Data mining is the strategy of sifting through massive datasets to uncover patterns, trends,
and other truths about data that aren’t initially visible using machine learning, statistics,
and database systems.
This is a useful element of business analytics as it leads to faster and more efficient
decision making.

Text mining

Text mining is the process of extracting high-quality information from the text on apps
and throughout the World Wide Web.
Companies use text mining to collect textual information from social media sites, blog
comments, and even call center scripts. Then, this data is used to improve customer
service and experience, develop new products, and review the performance of their
competitors.

Data aggregation
The process of data aggregation consists of gathering and collecting the data, which is
then presented in a summarized format. Essentially, before it can be analyzed, it needs to
be collected, centralized, cleaned, and then filtered to remove any inaccuracies or
redundancies. 
This is a crucial step for business analytics because the accuracy in which you can gather
insights from data is directly related to the kind of relevant and actionable results you’ll
have at the conclusion of the process. 

Forecasting

When business analytics are used to analyze processes that occurred during a specific
period or season, businesses are provided with a forecast of future events or behaviors,
thanks to historical data.

Data visualization

Data visualization is an absolute must-have part of business analytics. It seamlessly takes

the information and insights drawn from your data and presents it in an interactive graph
or chart.  
The right data visualization software is crucial to this process to help track business
metrics and KPIs in real-time so you can better understand performance and goals.

Benefits of business analytics

One of the main benefits is that it allows your business to plan for the unexpected. BA can
model the trends in an organization’s sales, profits, and other key metrics while projecting
them for the future. This allows businesses to see changes that may occur annually,
seasonally, or on any scale, which provides a chance to prepare and plan ahead.
Business analytics also allows your organization to test new marketing campaigns. Since
BA provides you with data surrounding customer behavior, you can better understand the
effectiveness of your advertising campaigns on different audiences and demographics.
Also, when you’re able to identify that the customer is less likely to return, you can
consider offering targeted promotions to gain their business back.
When you utilize BA to your advantage, you’ll have a competitive edge over the
competition -- no matter your industry. 

Challenges of business analytics

For starters, you’ll find the most success with it when all parties within your company
fully support its adoption and execution. It’s always going to need buy-in from senior
leadership and a clear corporate strategy.
Getting everyone in upper management to sign off on a BA strategy can be difficult, so be
sure to present business analytics as supportive of strategies already in place. This should
also include clear and measurable goals to help those who are slow to be convinced by the
benefits of BA.
In addition to executive ownership, business analytics also require IT involvement,
meaning the right technology infrastructure and tools in place to handle the data. Business
and IT teams must work together for business analytics to truly succeed. While you’re at
it, make sure you have the right project management software in place to implement
predictive models and adopt an agile approach.