Introduction to Data Visualization and Why they are important

Data visualization refers to the graphical representation of data, which makes it easier to understand and interpret large and complex data sets. The goal of data visualization is to communicate information effectively and clearly to the target audience, often through interactive and visually appealing graphics which makes large quantity of data easy to understand in the way the end customer needs. With the growing amount of data in various fields, increasing complexity, ever dynamic environment, and comparative analysis the importance of data visualization has become more apparent. We need ways to grab huge volume of data resulting in simple, quick and easy to understand formats.

Why is Data Visualization Important?

Data visualization is important because it provides a visual representation of data and enables individuals to understand complex information and insights more quickly and effectively. It helps in identifying patterns, trends, and relationships in data that might not be immediately apparent from raw data alone, making it easier for individuals to make informed decisions based on the insights derived from the data. Additionally, data visualization allows for easy comparison and communication of information to a wider audience, making it an essential tool for data analysis and interpretation.

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  • Understanding Complex Data: Data visualization makes it possible to understand complex data by presenting it in a easy to understand graphs and charts, breaking the complexity of underlying data into effective and needed KPIs.
  • Facilitating Decision Making: Data visualization can be used to present large volume of data from varied sources in much more simpler formats. Thereby; the stakeholders can grab the needed information at a glance and can quickly identify trends and patterns. They can use these in making the right decisions in time for organizational growth and have a cutting edge over their competitors.
  • Improving Communication: Complex data generally speaks a lot, and different inferences can be made by different experts; thus, the communication gap is evident. Utilizing data in a way where we show up information based on individual KPIs and information parameters ensures that everyone is on the same page. Now Business leaders making critical decisions, Operations team handling executing the tasks and technical teams enabling the processes all speaks the same language and share the same understanding.
  • Saving Time: Reading through texts and numbers takes a lot of time to get meaningful results. And as it is aptly said a picture is worth a thousand words. Data visualization thus ensures to speak out for the information that we need in a much more efficient way. It saves time and effort needed to actually go through and analyze large and complex data sets. By presenting the data in a visual format, insights can be quickly and easily understood.

Data Visualization Software Applications

Most of the work of converting data into meaningful information are readily available off the shelf for your use. However, which one will suffice your needs depends on various factors. The market is full of different applications from various categories which can serve the purpose; however, not all are actually needed by the business. You may have to decide for yourself if you are looking for just the charting engine where you design your own charts and keep on doing so for every data that you have, or business intelligence application, once set up, that can handle most of work for you. Even within BI applications if you are looking for big brands which do have their own features but are expensive and charge you for every additional user or data expansion and any additional feature. Otherwise, you may also try to look for cost effective alternatives in open-source applications that are available to the public and can cater to all your data visualization needs at negligible cost in comparison.

Some key factors that may help you decide:

  • Cost-effectiveness:Proprietary products generally cost higher; however, open-source applications are available at negligible pricing in comparison. Thereby, making it possible for individuals and organizations to visualize their data without burning a hole in your pockets. Moreover, big brands generally charge based on the license per user, per data points, per application feature, which keeps on piling up to the costs.
  • Customizability:A simple question, should the application adjust to your business, or you want to change your business to suite the application you got? If the application comes with a customizable workflow option where you decide what you want the application to does, it will be more usable than other way around.
  • Software support:If we are going for any of the software application, major factor is the application support. Proprietary products are generally serviced by the product makers, while open-source projects often have a large community of developers which can contribute to the application development and support. What is the difference? Proprietary products have a product roadmap and you can request them what you need. If they have it on roadmap, you will get it when you get there. However, for open-source products anyone who knows the intrinsic application code can make changes and share with community. Thus, anyone having the similar issues, can share the code and upgrades. You can raise your own concerns in the forums and everyone can pitch in to contribute. Its constantly evolving application.
  • Access to Source Code:As the names suggests open-source products does share the application code (free or at additional cost, with some intrinsic agreements) with the help of which you can change, modify and upgrade the application code to your needs. However, you cannot and should not be doing so in proprietary product or it will be license violation with penalties.

Helical Insight – Business Intelligence Framework:

Helical Insight is an open-source business intelligence platform that comes with best of both worlds: proprietary and open-source. Let’s review how the above points are covered with this application.

  • Application Support: The dedicated team of developers by the organization provides the roadmap to their next products and features. We update the roadmap based on industry needs and constant evolving customers’ needs. If you have some new requests or want to expedite some of roadmap features or functionalities, you can always do so at nominal costs.
    Moreover, there is ever increasing community support which can help you with any of your needs as well.
  • Pricing: The application comes with a flat pricing policy. It means, that no hidden costs for advance features, now additional costing for extra users or data points or number of reports or dashboards etc. The pricing is user-case bind, per server cost of installation.
  • Customizable: The application is known as a BI Framework for a reason, and the reason is that it is not limiting clients with anything. It has an inbuilt workflow engine that you can use to customize the workflow to your business needs. The number of data sources are unlimited, if you can get the right JDBC driver anywhere it can let you use the existing database. If you want to add up a new carting engine or use any graph, you can do so. The application is extensible in most of the aspects for the clients.
  • Source Code: In spite of all the support that you get, if you still feel interested in buying the source code of the application, it can be done at certain terms and conditions for safety of all our client-base.

To know more about the application features, functionalities and capabilities reach out or download a one-month trial of the application.

In the end

It is evident that data visualization can let you have the needed breakthrough with your data analysis and exploration needs. Hope you weigh in all the pros and cons before you make a purchase. Wish you good luck for your business.

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