Essential Data Visualization Tips for Engaging, Understanding, and Making an Impact
More businesses are now “drowning” under a massive influx of data. Going by the latest estimates, 1.145 trillion megabytes of data is generated daily. Even more impressive is that data usage is no longer restricted to a few industry domains or sectors. Be it large corporations or small enterprises, every company generates valuable data.
How does collected data impact the business decision-making process? Business users can easily interpret valuable trends and patterns from data through data visualization. Data visualization now converts massive data points into a compelling “story” with actionable insights.
In essence, data visualization has enabled multiple business benefits, including:
- Unlocking the true potential of Big Data
- Providing real-time access to information
- Identifying and correcting any data inaccuracies
What are the Must-Do(s) for business users to realize the immense potential of data visualization? Let’s start with some best practices.
Best Practices in Data Visualization for Business Users
Access to accurate and high-quality data is only part of the solution for business users. It’s equally important that business users correctly interpret the data to improve decisions and solve their business problems. Here are some of the data visualization best practices for business users:
-
Define the Business Goal
Effective data visualization must address business goals to remain relevant. Before visualizing the data, users must address the following questions:
- Who is the intended audience for data visualization?
- What is the specific information (or message) being conveyed?
- What is the desired outcome for the enterprise?
-
Drive Effective Decision-Making
Data visualization must drive effective decision-making processes for business users.
- Determine the business decision they must make and how visualization can help them.
- Additionally, consider how frequently they need to make this decision and under what circumstances. For example, it could be an operational decision like approving an insurance claim or a strategic decision like exploring a new business opportunity.
-
Select the Right Visual Elements
Data visualization works differently for business and technical users. Business users prefer to view simplified content on their dashboards. To that end, select the right elements to display information to business users based on their purpose. Here are some guidelines:
- Use tables only to display a lot of structured information.
- Line and area charts effectively present the relationship between two or more variables.
- Tree maps are effective for comparing proportions based on area size.
- Heatmaps are useful when representing data points using colour.
-
Engage with Business Users
Beyond data visualization, metric-based notifications and regular email reports can ensure continuous engagement with business users. Through triggered notifications, users know immediately whenever any threshold level is passed. Email reports can encourage business users to explore their dashboards actively.
Factors That Impact Data Visualization for Business Users
For enterprises, multiple factors can influence the choice of data visualization methods and tools. Here are some of the main factors:
Target Audience
As mentioned previously, visualized data must cater to the target audience’s requirements. Any visualization tool must adapt to the different needs of the target audience. For example, fitness app users prefer simplified data to represent their fitness progress
Dashboard Design
Data visualizers must strike the correct balance between simplicity and complexity for their dashboard design. An oversimplified dashboard may display insufficient information for business users. On the other hand, a complex dashboard may make it harder for them to extract relevant insights from the data.
Static or Dynamic Data
Data is either static (with quarterly or yearly changes) or dynamic (that keeps changing constantly). Enterprises can opt for static visualization or dynamic representation (time-based) depending on this factor.
Functionality
Businesses must choose visualization tools based on their functionality. Visualization tools must align with the business requirements. Selecting a device (with more functionalities) can also add to business costs instead of creating more business impact.
How Ellicium Can Help with Effective Data Visualization
Through our efficient reporting and dashboard services, Ellicium empowers business users with instant decision-making capabilities. With real-time data insights, our team enables its global customers to leverage the benefits of visual analytics and reporting.
We understand the importance of valuable insights for organizations to make business decisions. Our technology team has expertise in data visualization and business intelligence (BI) tools like Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, MicroStrategy, etc. Here is a successful case study of how a leading manufacturing company implemented enterprise-level analytical reporting to create a single version of the truth that connected all departments.
The Bottom Line
Through effective use, data visualization is potentially the best business asset for any data-driven organization. It can transform the decision-making process for business users, making it more impactful and engaging.
At Ellicium Solutions, we offer specialized data visualisation services for our global clients’ benefit. Here is how enterprises can easily convert data into instantaneous decisions using data visualization.
Are you looking to empower your business users with exceptional decision-making abilities? We can help you on this journey. Contact us now.