Data visualization is one of the hottest BI trends of recent years, but it’s typically conceptualized as an in-house tool because it does some powerful work on the analytics side. For example, as critical information comes pouring in, data visualization software helps clean up and break down all of those inputs, transforming it into easy-to-process graphics. From there, businesses can more easily build out a data-based strategy. Still, visualization isn’t all about what happens behind the scenes. It’s also powerful because it enables businesses to better communicate with their clients.
When data is transformed from a bunch of code or lines in a spreadsheet into a visual representation, it starts to become a narrative – and that’s where connections happen. What it reveals is a key reality of modern operations: once you’ve mastered your data, you also have a new perspective on your story.
The Structure And The Story
One of the major advantages of data visualization from a client communication perspective is that these new tools make it easy for businesses to arrange data in a variety of ways. Want to show temporal trends? Create a hierarchy? Show a set of three-dimensional relationships? Depending on the circumstances and the audience, you can choose different representation styles. Each offers a different lens, such as what kind of progress your business is making toward a financial goal or how launching a new project has changed your client relationships.
Speed And Responsiveness
Before the advent of modern visualization software, businesses were highly limited in how much information they could convey to clients. Usually they were restricted to the handful of graphs that could be uploaded to a report or stored on a website. With new technology and, as long as you have reliable website hosting, businesses can offer extensive, responsive data reporting. Users can change the time frame, adjust select parameters, and gain a deeper understanding of your operations.
Prediction Yields Engagement
Want to connect with clients and create excitement around new business opportunities? Data visualization can also help with this. As noted by datapine, predictive analytics are a top BI trend for 2020 and the ability to guess what waits ahead based on what lies behind your company is a gamechanger. Hold these elements side-by-side and you’ve got a complete story for your clients – a beginning, middle, and end that can be used to sell new services or help them take advantage of exciting opportunities.
It’s A Skill Share
Analytics experts have long been able to do much of what data visualization programs can do now. The difference? It took a long time and a lot of expertise; it wasn’t flexible or accessible. With the shift to a more heavily automated strategy, data visualization can actually shift closer to the communications end of your business’s operations. In fact, your non-data specialists in communications may actually do a better job of getting information across to clients than the data professionals working with the numbers. Let these professionals use this information to do what they do best – connect with your clients.
Data visualization will play an increasingly important role as sensors and data collection become central to all fields, so its new simplicity is only one part of the story. Just as businesses are becoming more adept with all this information, so are clients, and if you don’t use data to build a story about your business, the narrative might just get away from you.