4 Ways to Make the Most Impact with Your BI Data Visualizations

Data analysis and reporting are central to understanding your business on a deeper level, while looking for areas of concern and opportunity. With cloud-based BI tools, companies of all types and sizes now have access to powerful business intelligence tools that can be used to improve profits and expedite confident business decisions.

One of the most compelling aspects of BI software is the ability to create data visualizations that showcase data with powerful imagery that can improve understanding and reveal new insights by looking at data visually versus simply comparing data in numeric-only formats. 

Data visualizations are a popular BI functionality and provide you with a variety of options for creating stunning graphs, charts, maps, and more to breathe life into your data and make it more impactful for your business. 

Here are 4 important ways you can leverage BI data visualizations to make the most impact with and glean the most insights from your valuable business data. 

Modern BI solutions provide tools you can use to create stunning visualizations for analysis or presentation, but the true impact of any visualization will always be rooted in the quality and accuracy of the data used to create it. 

Properly integrating your data sources with your BI solution is critical to accurate data and high-quality visualizations. Your BI system and the visualizations you create can only be as good as the data in your system, so taking care with integrations is crucial. 

Most all BI tools offer the ability to create custom dashboards within the system. These dashboards can be specialized by role within your organization, and can be loaded with the reports, graphs, and other data visualizations that a user accesses frequently for their work. These reports will update according the rules in place, and will save time in running new reports and queries every single time you need the same report, but for a new time period. 

The BI dashboard provides quick access to data that you use every day, every week, every month, and more, and can be tailored for easy use and insights by user. 

Self-service BI systems and tools are a trending. These solutions are highly customizable, so you can create reports on your sales, industry trends, and customer information that is easy to access, analyze, and understand. They can also be set up to serve each of your business departments and provide your teams with the tools they need.

This trend is incredibly significant, because as data and analytics become more accessible across all levels of your business, you’ll find growing opportunities in data analysis that will enhance every department and benefit your overall business growth strategies immensely. 

BI systems offer an array of data visualization options. From charts and graphs to plots and maps, there are many ways you can give your business reports a visual form and function. However, its important that you choose the right type of visual element for the data you’re intending to convey. Even if your numbers are compelling, putting them in the wrong visualization can take away impact and understanding.

Some of the most commonly used data visualizations and use cases are outlined below.

• Bar Graphs: Best for comparing data across several categories that all share the same range of values.
• Line Graphs: Best for showing one or more data sets as they evolve and change over time.
• Data Tables: Best for organizing and comparing quantitative data, across many categories, in one place.
• Pie Charts: Best for comparing pieces of data, as part of a whole.
• Scatter Plots: Best for showing relationships between 2 quantitative measures.
• Tree Maps: Best for showing colorful representations (based on size or hierarchy) in squares and rectangles.

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