What is Data Visualization?
Data visualisation is visual communication that makes communication of data easier and clear. In simple terms, it’s an attempt to convert information of text format to visuals which can be a chart, graph etc. It’s an effort that helps people understand the significance of data by placing it in a visual context. Effective data visualization should be efficient, informative, appealing and in some cases, it should be predictive and interactive.
Why is Data Visualization Important?
As human brain can process information more easily and quickly when represented visually, using graphs or charts to visualize a large amount of complex data is much easier than putting those data over spreadsheets etc. Complex data gets more understandable, accessible and usable.
For businesses, this pictorial interpretation of data is becoming very useful as it allows them to have informed and right decisions according to the business environment. The corporate landscape has been greatly affected in a positive way with data visualization.
In modern business intelligence (BI), the success stories of Tableau and Qlik, the two leading vendors is the result of emphasize they have put on data visualization. This has led other vendors to adopt visual approach more in their software. In terms of democratizing data as well as analytics and providing data-driven insights to the employees in an organization, data visualization tools are very important.
In today’s data focussed business scenario, data visualization is without a doubt a vital tool. By using data visualisation, organisations can make better their businesses by understanding business trends, knowing the things for improvements, take informed decisions etc.
Data visualization is an easy, quick method to convey concepts in a universal way. By making slight changes, users can even experiment with different scenarios. Let’s check how data visualization is help for businesses:
• Comprehend information quickly
As it is significantly faster to comprehend information in pictorial format, business can address problems quickly and answer to queries in a timely manner.
• Faster decision making
With data visualization, you can do faster decision leading to improved operational performance and smarter go to market strategies. As it is faster to comprehend information in graphical format, businesses can address problems and answer to queries in a timely manner.
• Solve problems
Data alone is not sufficient to solve problems that your business is facing. When you visualize your data, it can simplify the concepts and identity the patterns which is otherwise quite difficult to spot. It can even help your business to identify answers, value and make faster the process of analysis. This leads to learning as well as development of solutions to the most difficult business problems.
• Identify areas to be improved
Identify the areas of your business that need improvement or attention so that more revenue gets generated making your business more productive. The graphs and charts will help in understanding your business better and faster in comparison to reports.
Data visualization can also help you in the following ways
- Allow you to analyse the processes such as product, customer, marketing and sales.
- Get to know which factors are influencing customer behaviour. As you will be able to define your customers according to their interest and geographical location, retaining your customers get easier.
- Helps in understanding which products to place where.
- Predict sales volumes as it will help you to understand the market better, have in-depth sales analysis and prepare your sales strategy accordingly.
No matter you are a start-up, small sized or large company, you can use data visualization tools to understand your business better. However, while using the tools you should make sure that you have the best tools and the data you’re using is reliable. Having the right data is very necessary as the result you’ll get in the form of pictorial graphics will be based on the input data.
