Data, an integral part of each and every business regardless which sector it’s based in, is the new oil. Referring back to the term Clive Humby coined in 2006 for the obvious reason that the value of data still (well, even after more than a decade - surprising enough, considering the fast pace world has been evolving with eversince!) depends solely upon the way it is broken down into smaller sub-parts, analyzed and utilized in decision-making processes. Data visualisation services get that funda right and thus, have a big say when it comes to the shift in corporate culture over the years, too. The reason why the corporate scenario in today's date has become more visual than it has ever been in terms of pitching ideas, promoting business products over social media and more is legit. Because, visualizing data has enabled a brand new approach through digital innovations like custom dashboards and smart reports, which has not just visibly fitted petabytes of old-school data locked up in mundane numeric formats into crisp visual reports, but also made the comprehensive content easily absorbable to human brains.
Let’s bring a quick fact into light here - our brain processes data as visual information 60,000 times faster than text and that is why the biggies in the business have been investing in interactive tools for data representation for years now, making strategic decisions driven by real-time data and not just mere intuitions.
Don't believe the words? Learn it from the numbers, then!
Statista says the global market of data visualization is expected to reach 7.76 billion U.S. dollars by 2023 with a gasping CAGR of 9.47%. Another study reveals that organizations using real time data visualization, analyze critical information right within the decision window 78% of the time.
Now that the stats point at a fairly bright present and brighter future for data visualisation software, let’s dig deeper into the nitty-gritties of it!
When Do You Need A Data Visualization Software?
If implemented the right way, data visualization has enough power to squeeze a compact visual summary out of an ocean of conventional data and even control the spread of an epidemic - let that sink in!
While your business might never need to be responsible for stopping the 2020 Covid-19 break out or any of such future epidemics, data visualization services can still be just as significant for your business, improving your decision-making process.
Thus, in today’s date, visualizing your business data is no more just supplementary, but the proven accelerator to your business growth. To know why, look for the following challenges you might be encountering lately!
Struggling to sieve critical information from extensive real-time data?
Probably yes, as almost every business is! With the world generating a whopping 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every single day, it gets utterly difficult for businesses to go through several rows of the spreadsheets, and gain insights streamlined to contribute to explicit outcomes only. Also, it is nearly impossible to manually extract and refine the data taking into account all the current bearings and happenings in real-time. As a result, these outdated data end up adversely influencing your decision making process, preventing your market growth along the way.
Manually visualizing all the business data - a joke, for sure!
Starting with the numbers again - statistics show that 90% of the information transmitted to the human brain is visual. Therefore, the fact that representing raw data through graphs and charts is incredibly impactful than using the data in big numbers doesn’t need much justification. But, how to go about it? As you put your best focus forward yet fail to manually analyze half of the data, leave alone all, converting them in visual format sounds like another headache.
The tug-of-war between security and data access giving you a tough time?
It’s true that having a centralized system and sharing data within it keeps the data secure but how troublesome does it get at times when your people cannot access the data just when needed? Easy access to data anytime by people requiring it should be of top priority when it comes to the point of investing in data analytics.
Can’t afford to have data visualisation skills onboard?
A lot of the businesses struggle to get the data analysis right only because they lack in-house skilled labour. Think of the times when the data analytics team or members do not have the relevant knowledge or potential to analyze and have in-depth data analytics and visualization, yet you assign them to do so. The result can be predicted very easily - ineffective analysis and wrong visualization of data, eventually leading to a big harm in the business decision-making potency.
Has your business entered the growth phase but your data analysis is still stuck notches below?
As your business grows, it requires collecting more and more real-time data to make concrete decisions based on a number of highly influencing factors - your competitors’ approach, market value of the products or services that you offer, consumers’ preferences, latest market trends to name a few. Analysing this enormous amount of data manually can be downright frustrating and tends to leave ample scope for half baked decisions, weakening the ground beneath the next step your business takes.
Likewise, collecting useful information and creating reports out of it may become a nightmare for businesses without proper tools and systems that have the capability to scale along with the business’ growth.
If you found the above points or even some of them relatable, then now is the best time to embrace a data visualization software!
Best ways to implement data visualization
While the benefits of a data visualization are many, you can only make the most of it if you choose the right visuals! Remember the funda is to put data into simple and digestible format, that serves all three of the following purposes at one go:
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Your audience can quickly understand the idea you’re trying to convey through the visuals
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Your audience can absorb as much information as you have represented through the visuals
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Your data visualization helps you take a decision based on real time operational data.
Let’s have a look at the most effective categories of visuals that can amplify the value of your business data:
Popular Data Visualization Techniques:
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Tables
Tables
A table lists a number of records put in row-wise and the fields of comparison column-wise. This arrangement is best for accommodating a lot of information in a structured format. For example, a table of your business products or services can help your clients get a fair idea regarding your business because honestly, who has the time to invest in a fat file consisting of essays regarding your business! However, if your audience is looking for high-level trends only, then look for the next one.
- Line Charts
Line Charts
Line charts are here to keep such audiences happy, who want to track trends or changes by comparing multiple occurrences over a custom timeline and reflect the inter-relationship among several attributes. Short - simple and precise! Think of visualizing the record of your products which has been declined while delivery was attempted in the last six months. You can view the trend right through a line chart, without paying scrupulous attention to a bunch of papers holding data regarding a number of occurrences.
- Area Charts
Area Charts
As the name suggests, area charts visualize data as shaded regions enclosing a range of points. Area charts are best options if you want to show data regarding cumulative aggregates or even percentages. Think of a study of popularity of products in terms of their price range. With an area chart you skip paddling through a stack of papers recording the orders received, repurchases etc. and have the desired information right in front of your eyes, making it easier for you to understand and utilize.
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Scatterplots & Bubble Plots
Scatterplots & Bubble Plots
Scatterplots involve values of two variables put across two axes. The patterns obtained from the resultant points indicate a correlation between those two, if any! Bubble charts are a version of scatterplots with subtle differences between their functionalities. Unlike scatterplots, bubble plots envision the variation between three attributes along two axes, where the third attribute is depicted by the size of the bubble.
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Bar Charts
Bar Charts
Bar charts represent non-continuous, discrete data in terms of rectangular bars. These charts can be used for comparing varied categories of data. For instance, it’s a great idea to use bar charts for performance management - try plotting daily, monthly or even yearly employee performances as the bars for convenience.
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Pie Charts and Donut Charts
Pie Charts and Donut Charts
Pie charts and donut charts (a special type of pie chart with a hole at its center) are popular visuals used for comparing different parts of a whole (whole is generally taken as 100%). The parts are put as labelled wedge shapes in the pie charts and it is their labels that enable easy comparison among them. Pie charts are great for visualizing aspects like marketing expenditures, as it can depict all the fields where expenses have gone into. For example, you can view the entire breakup of your total marketing expenses just having a look at the pie chart as: printed media advertising - 19%, sales training - 15%, promotional items - 5%, TV advertising - 10%, trade shows - 10%, conventions- 20%, catalogues and brochures- 21%.
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Treemaps
Treemaps
Treemaps are a great option to compare categorical proportions via rectangles present for each number of categories to be compared further divided into sub-rectangles for levels in its hierarchy, in a space-filling way. This technique is appropriate for visualising hierarchical data, for example regarding finances, to simplify the data for investment portfolios.
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Natural Language Generation
Natural Language Generation
Data science has clearly taken the tech world by storm and out of all the ways it has made surviving business struggles easier, natural language generation, abbreviated as NLG, demands special mention. NLG, powered by Business Intelligence, basically refers to the task of generating naturally spoken language from a vast data set, to be used for interpreting data associated with routined analysis and converting them to intelligible visuals. The best way you can implement NLG in your business is by assigning it to take care of the queries coming from your customers without your customer support agents consuming hours to get through the desired data from a bucketload.
A table lists a number of records put in row-wise and the fields of comparison column-wise. This arrangement is best for accommodating a lot of information in a structured format. For example, a table of your business products or services can help your clients get a fair idea regarding your business because honestly, who has the time to invest in a fat file consisting of essays regarding your business! However, if your audience is looking for high-level trends only, then look for the next one.
Line charts are here to keep such audiences happy, who want to track trends or changes by comparing multiple occurrences over a custom timeline and reflect the inter-relationship among several attributes. Short - simple and precise! Think of visualizing the record of your products which has been declined while delivery was attempted in the last six months. You can view the trend right through a line chart, without paying scrupulous attention to a bunch of papers holding data regarding a number of occurrences.
As the name suggests, area charts visualize data as shaded regions enclosing a range of points. Area charts are best options if you want to show data regarding cumulative aggregates or even percentages. Think of a study of popularity of products in terms of their price range. With an area chart you skip paddling through a stack of papers recording the orders received, repurchases etc. and have the desired information right in front of your eyes, making it easier for you to understand and utilize.
Scatterplots involve values of two variables put across two axes. The patterns obtained from the resultant points indicate a correlation between those two, if any! Bubble charts are a version of scatterplots with subtle differences between their functionalities. Unlike scatterplots, bubble plots envision the variation between three attributes along two axes, where the third attribute is depicted by the size of the bubble.
Bar charts represent non-continuous, discrete data in terms of rectangular bars. These charts can be used for comparing varied categories of data. For instance, it’s a great idea to use bar charts for performance management - try plotting daily, monthly or even yearly employee performances as the bars for convenience.
Pie charts and donut charts (a special type of pie chart with a hole at its center) are popular visuals used for comparing different parts of a whole (whole is generally taken as 100%). The parts are put as labelled wedge shapes in the pie charts and it is their labels that enable easy comparison among them. Pie charts are great for visualizing aspects like marketing expenditures, as it can depict all the fields where expenses have gone into. For example, you can view the entire breakup of your total marketing expenses just having a look at the pie chart as: printed media advertising - 19%, sales training - 15%, promotional items - 5%, TV advertising - 10%, trade shows - 10%, conventions- 20%, catalogues and brochures- 21%.
Treemaps are a great option to compare categorical proportions via rectangles present for each number of categories to be compared further divided into sub-rectangles for levels in its hierarchy, in a space-filling way. This technique is appropriate for visualising hierarchical data, for example regarding finances, to simplify the data for investment portfolios.
Data science has clearly taken the tech world by storm and out of all the ways it has made surviving business struggles easier, natural language generation, abbreviated as NLG, demands special mention. NLG, powered by Business Intelligence, basically refers to the task of generating naturally spoken language from a vast data set, to be used for interpreting data associated with routined analysis and converting them to intelligible visuals. The best way you can implement NLG in your business is by assigning it to take care of the queries coming from your customers without your customer support agents consuming hours to get through the desired data from a bucketload.
How data visualisation software works on your brain?
That was about the ways to implement data visualization, but hold on before we jump to its benefits! Have you wondered how the information in terms of visuals is communicated to human brains?
Let’s have a quick look!
Visual Metaphors
Human visual systems have evolved in order to make survival easy in this tangible world and data visualisation is built to make the most of that evolution through visual metaphors symbolically. Thus, to communicate the concepts embedded in the data, visual metaphors are used according to the data type, as discussed in the previous section. Potentially, data visualization achieved in any way depends upon some sort of a metaphor to deliver the useful information to the audience successfully.
Visual Context
Data visualization overweights traditional data interpretation for reasons galore - one of those is that through data transformed into visuals, we get to perceive real-time scenarios a lot faster, which would otherwise cost us a great deal of time and diligence if done manually. Data visualizations enable new contexts by allowing us to point out orders and patterns existing in the data.
Exploration
However, choosing the right visualization to complement your business data is a significant part of the process. A randomly picked-up visualization technique has all the possibilities to fail at fetching you the insights you actually want to get. That’s exactly why exploration is of utmost importance, as it is critical to find the appropriate metaphor resulting in the desired context, making complete sense of the implicit information.
How to be ready to have a data visualisation software onboard?
The primary goal for visualizing data is to fit bulky data into precise visuals and shine a light upon crucial information hidden within the data load, revealing details that would otherwise remain unnoticed.
So, before diving into the advantages you get from a data visualization software, have a look at the factors that will help you make the most of data visualization!
Identify the data you would like to visualize with close attention to its volume and cardinality i.e. uniqueness of column-wise data content. Every data carries different intent and so, forcing all of the data through one or two types of visuals is one terrible way to deploy data visualisation. Thus, carefully select the data you want to get visualised and choose the visuals aligned with its intent.
Understand why you’re trying to visualize the data and what decisions you desire the visuals to implement. The frequency of the decision varies based on its nature: if you are thinking of a strategic decision, that might be required to be one in a long-period - whether or not to rent another office, for example. Decision can be operational too, meaning something that needs to be taken care of every other day- say, approving or denying a claim. Again, if the decision is tactical, it might require periodic reviews. Your data visualization solution should ideally resonate with the decision-making frequency.
Keep the way you want to communicate ideas visually, ready so that the developer team shares the same perspective while developing your data visualization software.
Know how your audience processes visual information. While developing a visual from your data, prioritize your audience - learn what challenges they encounter to deal with voluminous data and why are they not able to overcome the same. However, go by the preference of the majority of your clientele rather than creating a dashboard that lives up to the likings of each of the stakeholders who would possibly look at it someday - think about the present first.
Settle for a visual that portrays the information in the simplest form, being easiest for your audience to absorb. The primary goal of a data visualization software is to empower the audience to take an action backed by solid data evidence. With several choices available for data visualization, it is important to have a threshold defined in your chosen visual so that it pinpoints to the problem area(s) and effectively stipulates when an action is required.
What are the benefits of a data visualization software?
Amplifies your message through visual information
Data Visualization software allows businesses to convert their complicated and enormous data into easy-to-interpret visual information without a hitch. These visual information are easier to understand, analyze and interpret for the business person dealing with huge data in the form of numbers or texts every day.
Data visualization solutions help picture your data from mostly used sources like excel and spreadsheets across an interactive map or chart. You can further optimize and visualize your data in a visual of your choice to communicate and share your findings with the stakeholders.
Reveals patterns and trends hidden in data
Being aware of patterns and trends hidden within enormous amounts of data is crucial for organizations to keep pace with the ongoing market scenario Without taking such information into account, businesses take a clueless step in the industry where every step either makes or breaks the business growth, making assumption-based decisions overlooking the facts that matter. On contrary to that, data visualization pulls up those patterns and trends from the pile of untapped data, adding ingredients for more informed decision making.
Speeds up decision-making process
What is the point of spending dollars and dollars on storing, managing and analyzing data, if it’s not having a strong say in your decisions? Well, the only way all the customer and market data can glorify your business is by providing insights of the potentials and new opportunities which are worth having onboard. But, it's of no use unless you effectively manage, interpret and interact with them. Data visualization software takes up the task, quickly recognizing every minute details regarding any new market trend or modifications in those, accelerating your decision-making.
As the saying goes, ‘Time is money’, a sloth approach towards decision-making can often lead to direct losses. So, by making quicker decisions through data visualization and taking timely actions as per influential trends, you don’t just outstrip your competitors and prevent losses, but also make capital out of unforeseen market conditions.
Drills down data
Businesses, in general, have many segments and each segment has their own data set. Finding the relevant data set for analysis in real time can be troublesome at times.
Data visualization software enables you to choose a smaller part of your data set and use the filtered data set to view or analyse it. Filtering can be used to view results for a particular time window, for particular groups of interest. Data visualization softwares allows you to divide the data set into subsets, and further use these subsets into analysis independently to view and compare the results.
Saves time yet serves the purpose
Without having effective data analysis tools in place, your employees need to spend hours modifying dashboards, creating reports and analyzing the data to get required insights. In addition to that, these critical tasks can be done only if someone is skilled enough to tackle these data related activities.
In most of the cases, businesses lack either time or skill and as a result, they end up spending too many hours on data handling or handle data ineffectively. Both the ways, the businesses miss out on timely decisions.
That is something data visualization can get done and dusted in a matter of minutes, without killing your time or skills.
A data visualization software helps eliminate these issues easily as it fetches data instantly and with little or no human intervention at all, creates and modifies reports and visuals. Thus, you can put the saved time into your core business activities for better growth, efficiency and productivity of the business.
Data Visualization Software - OTS Vs. Custom
At this point of time, when you have already known the power you can pack in your data by visualising it, the question boils down to how to go about a data visualisation solution - to build or buy?
Practically, there’s no ultimate answer to this question and just picking one of these at random will not be a sensible suggestion!
Instead, here’s a rundown on how both off-the-shelf (OTS) and custom-made Data Visualization softwares work, so you can make a choice fitting your needs!
Prefer going with the flow or creating your flow?
An OTS software is made to serve a community of users looking for visualising their data, regardless of which industry they belong to. Naturally, an OTS has to be really generic in terms of implementing the workflow to fit every type of business, be it of an FMCG or a healthcare company!
On the other hand, a custom data visualisation software is built for your business and thus, only prioritises and executes your long-practised workflow. So, you don’t have to adjust your processes according to someone else’s in the name of getting your data visualized!
Strictly least initial investment Or, A few bucks more for a holistic solution?
In the current market, it is hard to gain competitive advantage and so, the wise business people don’t mind spending a few extra bucks as far as quality is concerned. So, custom data visualization becomes their choice, as it saves both their time and operating costs in the long run coming off as a compact solution to all the problems conveyed to the development team. However, if you are not willing to spend the extra pennies, you might have to encounter a few junk features in your day to day operations wasting a considerable amount from your precious time.
A technology that you are not used to Or, one you are familiar with?
Every business operates with varied tech stacks and while some might be common, the entire set of technologies put in use mostly differs from one another. So, as an OTS caters to not just you or any individual, but several other such users, it takes into account only the common technologies as used by the majority.
However, if you are skeptical about spending another hefty amount on training your employees, you can simply opt for custom development! The custom development team sits with your employees and uses technologies only as per their ease of usage and convenience.
Make do with just any report Or, a personalized report?
Your business must be having its own unique characteristics that distinguishes it from the others in the market and hence, the way you want to visualise your data might require some exceptional visuals to be used. But if you are expecting an OTS to serve you that way, hard luck! To cater to its thousands of users, an off-the-shelf solution deploys a number of common visuals to go with the common types of data businesses generally want to transform visually. On the contrary, you have the freedom to select visuals suiting your data when you go the custom route.
Manual integration Or, instant auto-integration?
Imagine having a data visualization software which only generates a visual and leaves it up to you, so you have to take it and upload it to some other software for your people to access it. Sounds like a tedious task, right? That is the thing about OTS softwares- they do what their name suggests only. Since there are several other users using the same OTS software just like you and almost all of them are using third-party softwares different from one another, integration is generally not incorporated as a feature. But, as a custom built data visualisation software focuses on upgrading your business processes only, it will seamlessly integrate with the third-party softwares your business has been using for so long.
Cut your goals to fit into a mould Or, won’t compromise with your core objective?
Ever heard of the phrase of fitting a square peg in a round hole? That is exactly what you need to do, to drastically modify your requirement in terms of features and functionalities as per the offerings of OTS. Whereas, a custom visualisation software is developed keeping in mind your specific requirements and thus, fits your purpose like a glove, well, virtually!
All the above mentioned points come down to the simple conclusion: there is always a fine (read, prominent) line between two alternate approaches and OTS & custom developed softwares are no exception. While both an on-the-go sandwich available for the mass at a stall and a sandwich that the chef particularly prepares for you satisfies your hunger- there are always going to be some differences. Even though the context is different, the underlying meaning is the same- if you get a solution tailored to your needs, that will obviously outweigh the benefits of one made for all!
What Data Visualization Services Do BinaryFolks Offer?
Be it custom dashboards or accurate insights drawn by advanced technology - BinaryFolks offers you both and everything in between. We offer you an array of data visualisation services including but not limited to the following
Marketing analytics
BinaryFolks helps you get the right marketing analytics in place, allowing you to spot the latest trends having the potential to drive (or hinder) the marketing performance of your business. Armed with the following profound insights into customer preferences and trends, we can optimize your strategy to enhance sales
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Campaign performance insights
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Consumer insights
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Product effectiveness insights
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Scope for product innovation
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Consumer experience insights
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Revenue and market share insights
Business Analytics
With data growing like a wildflower in the information centric world, it is getting increasingly difficult to make sense of the data heap and that’s when business analytics come off as the saviour. Business analytics ease the task of identifying hard-to-recognize patterns hidden in data, mines and filters information having commercial value. We provide you the following actionable insights based on real time data to streamline your decision-making process
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Track key performance business indicators
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Corporate Performance Management
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Employee feedback analysis
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Sentiment analysis
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Interactive display options – Dashboards, graphs, alerts, Scorecards
Supply Chain Analytics
Efficient and effective supply chain management is synonymous to competitive advantage, as the process starting from ‘manufacturing’ to ‘delivering to the customer’ is a matter of constant concern to a majority of the businesses and not many have mastered the art of making it effortless yet. To help you get off that list and manage your supply chain activities like never before, we offer supply chain analytics for maximizing efficiency in your business processes, minimizing operating costs and optimizing your supply chain method
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Trace products in the supply chain
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Consumer experience insights
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Order fulfillment reports
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Sales insights
IoT analytics
Our IoT data analytics enables you to smartly schedule maintenance tasks and eliminate any downtime of the machines in action and lowers maintenance costs by a considerable amount. Also, the IoT analytics that you get with our data visualisation software helps you manage and monitor thousands of IoT/ Remote devices from a centralized command and control center in real time through
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Device health monitoring
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Process monitoring
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Connectivity insights
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Disk usage insights
FAQs
- Car reselling platform
- Online Travel Management
- Property Management and Inspection Platform
Look into websites of these software development companies to see where they provide data visualization software related services or not. Their website pages have a brief introduction of what they do and develop.
After the search for a software development company is over, start evaluating the company: look at their past projects, ask them to share their experiences, evaluate their technical knowledge, see their history of delivering the software to the clients, look for how effectively they communicate.
Considering all the above mentioned points, choosing the best software development company for your dream project will be much easier and effortless.
These data visualization software provides businesses with tools and techniques that can help business leaders to easily interpret and act on these information effortlessly and accurately that can help them act accordingly to any undesirable situation with the data and information they have gathered.