Business Intelligence: Data Presentation and Visualization Methods

Data Visualization

Data visualization is a general term used to describe any technology that lets corporate executives and other end users “see” data in order to help them better understand the information and put it in a business context. It is used to communicate data or information by encoding it as visual objects (e.g., points, lines or bars) contained in graphics.

Business Vignettes and Methods of Presentation

Human Resource Management

Human resource management include data management of employment related actions such as recruitment, promotion, classification, compensation, performance, training, etc. Some important metrics related to human resource management are headcount of employees in each department, number of employees in the company by year, number of employees by salary, payroll breakdown in various departments, etc. To represent these metrics some of the common presentation methods are horizontal and vertical bar charts, pie charts, doughnut charts, line charts, etc.

To represent human resource (HR) data, bar charts seem the most appropriate to me. This is because HR data can mostly be represented along two axes. For example, data can be plotted against number-year, cost-year, department-number, etc. Visualization using bar charts looks simple and clean, yet informative.

Bar chart showing HR data

Financial Services: Banking

Banks have access to more customer information than businesses in any other sector, and it is vital to effectively leverage information assets. Currently, transactional data remains one of the keys areas of focus for financial institutions. Analyzing transactions can uncover powerful insights into customer needs, preferences and behaviors. Transaction data can be represented by a number of different charts since each time it may have different attributes to represent. For example, while representing number of transactions across different credit institutions, we can use the simple bar chart. Whereas, to represent complex data such as detailed transactional activities across amount and time, we may use something as complex as an area chart.

To ease visualization, I believe it is better to show information in multiple charts instead of cramming all information into one chart. A combination of pie chart, stacked charts and line charts can be used to analyze different transactions across different attributes. These chart types are simple and easy to understand rather than complex charts like area charts.

Pie charts and Stacked charts showing transactional data in Banking domain

Transportation

To keep up with the demands of the information age, transportation firms must do more than simply move passengers or shipments from point A to point B on time. Customers demand constant real-time visibility and increased self-service. Employees must provide just-in-time service via a combination of traditional tools and mobile devices. Managers need the business insight to optimize schedules and routes, hedge fuel costs, create the right marketing offers, set competitive fares and rates, and identify and retain top employees.

Based on the type of data being shown, we can use various type of charts in the transportation domain. This may include bar chart, pie chart, heat maps, bubble chart, line chart, doughnut chart and other geographical maps.

In my opinion, it all depends on the type of transportation data that you want to show. Depending on the need, one can choose from bubble chart, heat maps and geographical maps. For example, if we want to see which city has the most number of public transportation routes available, we might choose a bubble chart. But if we want to view traffic distribution across different areas, we may use geographical maps.