The Five Benefits of Data Visualization

What is (big) Data Visualization?

Data Visualization is a graphical representation of data and information. By using visual elements such as graphs, charts, and maps, data visualization tools can provide an approachable way to foresee and understand trends and patterns in data. They help us to group and organize data based on categories and themes, making it easier to break down and understand. In the world of Big Data, Data Visualization tools and technologies are crucial to analyze large amounts of information in order to make data-driven decisions.

1. Unlocking key values
   First of all, Data Visualization ensures that key values can be unlocked from massive sets of data. Large amounts of data in particular can be overwhelming and difficult to wrap our head around. Data Visualization helps with this by making the key values of the data clear and easily visible. This makes it easy to understand and interpret for everyone in the company.
   
   
2. Identify patterns
   Second, Data Visualization unlocks other previously invisible patterns. These other emergent properties in the data can formulate new valuable insights, which could not have been discovered before. Visualization allows business users to recognize relationships and patterns between the data, and also gives it greater meaning. By exploring these patterns, users can focus on specific areas that need attention in the data, to determine the importance of these areas to move their business forward.
   
   
3. Easy to understand
   The aim is to tell a good story by translating the data into a form that would be easy to understand for everyone. Eventually useful information would be highlighted and the noise would thus be eliminated from the data.
   
   
4. More attractive and user-engaged
   This attractiveness is achieved by using visually appealing ways of presenting data and adhering to design best practices. Next-level visualizations present data in a very sensible way by using the most appropriate chart and formatting options. In addition, elegant transitions facilitate an attractive and smooth way of moving between different points in the storyline of a visualization. This will increase a user's engagement with the visualization, thus facilitating easy and quick interpretation and understanding. As a result, the message resonates strongly with the audience.
   
   However, it is not as simple as taking the data and placing them in a graph and making it look better. It's an act of balance between the form and a function. A plain graph can be boring to catch the attention or make a point; the most impressive visualization could take away from the data or it could speak volumes. It is important to realize that visuals and data have to work together to convey a message.
   
   
5. Display complex relationships
   Standard visuals, such as bar charts or line graphs, are often not sufficient when presenting complex relationships. A dataset with over a million distinct data points, for example, can hardly ever be presented in a standard manner. In that case, a visual that allows for interactive hierarchies and exploration is a much better option. The interactivity of an Data Visualization can facilitate next-level data exploration that matches a user's specific needs.

One of the major challenges of Data Visualization is that many organizations do not have the in-house knowledge or capacity to extract the data they have and visualize it in a clear way. The result of this is that it becomes hard to see the correlation and relationships that are not already known whereas that is the primary benefit of effective Data Visualization.

How can we, as Deloitte, help you with Data Visualization?

To ensure that organizations do not miss out on opportunities derived from these insights, our service offering Center of Analytics & Robotics Excellence (CARE) gives you a solution. CARE is part of Deloitte's service line, Business Process Solutions (BPS). BPS has IT, financial, accounting/reporting, and project management experts. This gives us a better understanding of your organization's situation and enables us to find the best solution for your business. Our CARE team has experience in interpreting the Big Data into a standardized and structured report in the form of visually appealing, easily usable, and interactive dashboards. These dashboards can process real-time data, making sure your organizations' insights remain accurate and relevant.

Our CARE experts will make sure that the way the data is visualized, Clearly reflects the purpose of underlying insights. We believe this to be a prime element of a good dashboarding. For example, a graph that can be perfectly suitable for discovering correlations often proves insufficient to signal trends and vice versa. Our expertise in Data Visualization results in an ideal tool that gives you proper insight into your organization’s most relevant management information. These insights also lend themselves perfectly for commercial purposes, such as sales pitches due to their visual attractiveness.

Would you like to know more about what CARE can do for you? Click here.