Data visualization is a collection of techniques used to better understand your company’s facts and figures. By harnessing technology to show data in a range of visual manners, leaders are better able to see and comprehend what’s working and what’s not in their businesses.
In general, data visualization organizes and analyzes facts and figures about:
- Clients
- Customers
- Prices
- Sales
- Expenditures
- Revenue
- Inventory
- Storage
- Rates of change
The benefits of using data visualization techniques are manifold — as numerous tech and business experts will tell you. We spoke to several of these experts and got the lowdown on how using data visualization can take your business to the next level.
Understanding the Complex Relationships Within Your Company’s Data: Key Benefits of Data Visualization
After speaking to a number of technology experts, we found 3 main benefits to incorporating data visualization into your company’s business strategy:
#1 – It helps your employees, co-workers, clients, and investors find interest in the numbers.
“Data visualization has a few benefits,” says Palindrome Consulting‘s Ilan Sredni, “One is that a picture is better to understand than thousands of lines of data.”
In other words, as the leader of your company, you need the people you work with to be as interested in the data as you are, and because this is such a challenge, data visualization is the way to go. Not everyone is a mathematician or can think in a non-visual way.
“Often until the data is built into a chart or graph, the path forward may not be so obvious,” says Ian Hansen of Philantech3. “Data in picture form generally helps recall important details more easily than written words. People will opt for visual above elusive or uninteresting every time, so smart decision-makers continually use data visualization, giving them an edge over those that don’t.”
#2 – It saves time when it comes to decision-making.
Again, facilitating a better understanding of the data is key when decisions need to be made — and made quickly. While you or the presenter of a specific subject within your company may be well-versed in the numbers you’re working with, displaying and explaining this information to others (and helping them understand it) can be difficult.
As Ian says: “Helping a client visualize their data is important because it can save time helping to show and highlight important pieces of data from which they can make decisions.” Guy Baroan of Baroan Technologies agrees: “Data Visualization provides immediate views and dashboards for key stakeholders to be able to make very quick decisions. Laying out the data in different formats allows you to see specific key metrics such and leading indicators to better manage your business.”
#3 – It helps you derive specific, pointed actions for success.
When data is not examined and understood in a deep way, it often does no good when it comes to taking action. If you have a better understanding (a better visualization) of the data, on the other hand, you can derive prescribed strategies and specific actions for success. As Guy puts it:
“For instance, to achieve a specific sales goal, you can determine how many sales calls would need to be made by sales rep per day in order to convert a certain number of prospects to clients. Having a measurement in place of the number of calls per day per sales rep or number of appointments, emails, or social media posts, can provide you with a measure to confirm your sales goals are on the right track.”
How Do You Harness Technology and Begin Using Data Visualization in Your Business?
“Seeing things in the correct graphical format helps understand trends, outliers, and patterns,” says Ilan Sredni. Sixty years ago, companies in all industries did their best to create graphs and charts for their data too. Unfortunately, at that time, the creation of these visual representations took immense time and effort.
Today, however, advances in technology have allowed the creation of highly-detailed and easy-to-understand charts and graphs in just minutes. Often, you don’t even need to manually enter data. Your managed services provider can help you establish a secure data storage strategy that also incorporates the routine creation of data visualization. This streamlined effort will provide all the benefits listed above in addition to others that will skyrocket your business to continued success.
