Benefits of Data Visualization for Your Business

Big data is an inexhaustible source of value for business. Based on data insights, companies can improve their products, provide customers with more personalized services, increase performance, security, conversion rate, revenue, and basically any business metrics that have growth potential.

Visualization and analytics play a pivotal role in leveraging big data. Data itself may have little to no benefit for business. It may be presented in a large number of datasets, unsorted silos or unreadable forms. Visualization and analytics are focused on turning this data into a practical source of high-value insights.

In this article, we talk about the key benefits of data visualization and show how big data visualization can impact business strategy and growth.

There are several definitions that explain the meaning of data visualization. All of them refer to the same idea — this is a process of turning complex into simple.

Big data visualization involves the use of methods, techniques and tools (we are going to talk about them later in this post) to translate relationships within data into visual language — charts, maps, diagrams, matrices, etc.

Why is data visualization important? According to Bain & Company, companies that integrate data intelligence are 5 times more likely to make decisions faster than competitors and 3 times more likely to execute decisions as intended. It makes them more adaptable and resilient to change and, as a result, more successful.

Companies recognize visualization as an essential step to transform data into an understandable readable format. By visualizing big data, managers find necessary information faster, study large amounts of data effectively, explore and drill down data to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their assets, processes, environment, etc.

Originally, companies saw the value of big data and data visualization only for cloud business intelligence (BI) purposes. Today, however, the growing market of IoT, AI and analytics services provide a new perspective and create a ton of opportunities for various sectors. This expands the business value of data visualization for nearly any domain, including healthcare, logistics, energy, manufacturing, and agriculture.

Let's explore the pros of data visualization for businesses that operate across these and other industries.

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What are the benefits of data visualization for business? With the right solutions and processes in place, every type or size of business can reap the benefits from available data assets. The advantages of data visualization are so diverse that any decision-maker be it a small retail store owner or the management board at a large manufacturing company can find a way to extract and use insights for the benefit of their business. Here are the key data visualization benefits that show how it works.

One of the biggest business benefits of data visualization is the simplicity and usability of visualized data. Human brain can process graphic information quickly and in much bigger portions than, for example, in spreadsheets or plain text. Visualization does exactly what our brains need — creates graphic content based on data and enables easier perception and comprehension of a large amount of information. This makes information more accessible throughout an organization and thus more useful to solve different business challenges.

One of the biggest benefits of big data visualization is the ability to find unobvious dependencies and correlations. Not only does the visualization of big data help in interpreting information. Placing several data sets on one map or chart, you can spot relationships and dependencies between them, identify specific conditions for certain events or results, find links, etc. Thus, you get exclusive insights that would otherwise be unavailable if not for visual representation.

Combined with advanced algorithms, big data analytics visualization allows finding patterns in data and, therefore, in related events. Some of these patterns can be seen with a naked eye, for example, on a bubble plot (see below). Others can be recognized only by smart algorithms. Analyzing these patterns, managers can make predictions, identify trends and build future-proof strategies.

Increased transparency of the processes is one of the key benefits of data visualization in business intelligence. Depending on the data source and business goals, managers can use visualization technologies to monitor system performance in real-time, analyze user journeys, track asset and resource usage. These insights can be used to identify and immediately address issues such as system overloads, gaps in customer experience or wasted resources.

It's hard to underestimate data visualization importance when we speak about safety and security. In many cases, visualized data can help managers identify threats, find mistakes, measure and analyze risks. Monitoring the performance of connected heavy machinery, for example, allows to detect errors before they lead to malfunction or breakdown. In terms of people’s safety, visual analytics helps prevent accidents at the workplace and, in some cases, even save lives.

Companies that work in highly competitive markets such as retail or entertainment rely on data to develop better products and provide better services. Their success often relies on the ability to quickly respond to emerging problems, analyze customer feedback, and get important insights on product or service usage. In this case, data visualization advantages translate into tangible returns fast, since companies that understand and use their data more effectively than others and build data-driven product or service strategies get an upper hand.

This is just a partial list of big data visualization advantages. In reality, any business focused on making sense of big data and gaining insight can discover the unique advantages of data visualization.

Thanks to modern tools and services, it's easier to integrate analytics and visualization practices into a business process. These tools leverage cloud and databases for sorting, organizing and storing data and create graphic representation to display information in easy-to-read formats (on dashboards, reports, etc.).

Data visualization tools offer different services and features. Some tools automatically choose techniques (interactive charts, plots, maps, etc.) for optimal data presentation. Others provide analytics services, determine correlations between data sets, and show ready-to-use insights.

What unites most data visualization solutions is rich configuration abilities which provide users with a wide range of opportunities for data manipulation, analytics and interpretation.

What are the advantages of data visualization for my business? We can help you answer this question. Let's talk!

Big data visualization techniques and tools are diverse and keep on developing. In short, techniques are the ways of representing data using visual elements, such as charts, plots, maps, infographics, etc.

Big data visualization tools are cloud-based services or custom software able to connect to the data source, extract raw data, process it and, using the right visualization techniques, display insights on configurable dashboards and reports.

Some of the most popular and recognizable examples of visualization tools are Tableau, Power BI or Elastic Stack’s Kibana for more advanced work with data. The majority of these tools provide analytics services, including machine learning capabilities. Others focus on high-end presentation of information based on VR/AR (e.g.Virtualitics).

Recently, we’ve made a detailed review of modern data visualization techniques. Check it out to learn about the types of data visualization tools for different business goals. We have divided them into groups depending on user skills and the purpose of data analytics and visualization.

We know about the importance of data visualization and the benefits of visual analytics first-hand. At Digiteum, we have been working on various data projects and helping our clients use data to solve real business problems, tackle the challenges of big data, build effective strategies, and create great products. Here are a few excellent examples of big data visualization that demonstrate the benefits and returns from data investment.

One of our clients manages a platform for augmenting user experiences with audio content. It is widely used on services like Fitbit and MIRROR. We integrated advanced data analytics and visualization into the platform to provide the client and users of the platform with high-value insights on streaming performance, conversions, and events. The client could leverage the benefits of visual analytics to identify where the system falls short and identify the events leading to the highest conversion rate.

As a result, decision-makers on both ends now use the insights to improve customer engagement, increase conversions and optimize both the platform and applications connected to it. Read the full success story...

Our long-standing client, one of the leading photo printing laboratories in the U.S., experiences an increased influx of customers on their web system every year during holiday seasons. The lab’s online services have to withstand extreme traffic loads which, if not addressed properly, can cause slowdown, crashes and, as a result, lost sales and declined customer satisfaction.

Our .NET dedicated team designed and developed a custom monitoring and control tool based on the combination of Elastic Stack solutions. Using this system, the management and support teams see the whole infrastructure in real-time on their dashboards, receive alerts, and maintain consistent and stable performance across all processes both online and on the production site. Read the full success story...

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Probably, one of the most unique big data projects we have worked with involved building a language corpus platform. This project includes processing up to 15 terabytes of data per year at incredible speed. It equals processing all news articles in English produced throughout the entire Internet daily within 3 hours.

In order to cope with this volume of data, make it scalable and keep it stable, we’ve configured an Azure-based platform to visualize the data pipeline in real-time. Today, the visibility of the workflow helps keep uninterrupted productivity — the system can take up to 10x overloads and still successfully process from 800k to 8 million raw documents per day. Find out more about the unique performance of Super Corpus Platform here.

If you are searching for a reliable team to help you develop an effective strategy for your company and receive tangible returns from your data investment, contact our team. We will help you discover unique opportunities for data visualization and analytics based on your business goals and needs.