Advanced Data Visualization - Coursework Example

October Overview In the current fast and continuously advancing technological world, visualization of data has been a subject of great concern. Software engineers, computer scientists, business professionals and other stakeholders in the business industry are fighting tooth and nail to come up with an advanced set of modularized systems, which can enhance their ability to enhance their respective business operations (Chen 90). This includes the use of recent advanced data visualization tools such as IBM cognos Insight, Microsoft Power view, MicroStrategy Visual Insight, SAS Visual Analytics and SAP Visual Intelligence. To be precise, different stakeholders in the business industry are doing all their best to apply latest technologies in their day-to-day business operations. This is in terms of understanding key subjects such as the performance of their companies in an industry, studying customer behavior and market trends. On this regard, this paper aims at presenting a well-organized analysis of the importance of advanced data visualization in the daily operations of different businesses (Murray 107). In simple terms, advanced data visualization entails a high quality set of integrated software functional features that aid in defining the significance of business by simply placing it in a visual context. Business patterns, trends and data correlations, which usually go undetected in the ordinary data analysis procedures can easily be exposed and made recognizable to the users using the advanced data visualization software. The current data visualization tools surpass the standard charts and graphs. Instead, data is displayed in more sophisticated ways, which include info graphics, heat maps and fever charts (Yau 202). This paper is therefore divided into five main segments. It begins with an overview of the research topic. This is followed by a well-stipulated set of data on the value of advanced data visualization to organizations. The third section addresses the limitations while the fourth one is about the future potential of advanced data visualization. Lastly but certainly not the least is a well-structured personal reflection on the whole subject of advanced data visualization (Krum 209). Value to organizations It is important to outline that almost all organizations around the world try hard to ensure that they adopt advanced data visualization in their day-to-day business practices. This is to ascertain they perfectly use it to promote achievement of their respective business goals. In essence, advanced data visualization plays a very crucial role in adding the value of an organization. Among the features that add this value are as outlined below (Yau 20). Firstly, advanced data visualization plays a huge in increasing the number of sales that an organization makes in a particular period. This is by use of an integrated analytics system such as that of IBM cognos Insight, which captures the entire customer data as they interact with organization data or products. The data is then processed to define the products or services that the customers prefer most (Chen 100). This information acts as the building block to ensuring that the organization can prepare itself to deliver the best services or products necessary for ascertaining that it sells more and more. In this sense, advanced data visualization adds great value by providing a strategic platform for increasing an organization’s sales revenue (Krum 102). An organization’s adoption of an advanced data visualization system also adds immense by specifically creating a large customer base. Creation of this targeted customer base is achieved through a deep processing and analysis of the market trends. To be precise, the data visualization system captures customer data and analyzes it to determine their top preferences. These preferences are then presented to the organization’s marketing heads in a strategic visual format to enable them understand the regions where it is essential for more marketing to be performed. In general, the data visualization system provides a bird’s eye view of how the organization is performing in different segments of the predefined market areas. This provides room for more marketing to be done in the areas where performance is low thus playing a huge role in widening an organization’s customer base (Yau 98). Data visualization technologies play a huge role providing organizations with lens of all the data insights. This is through simplification of large data volumes to facilitate easy comprehension by the respective organization stakeholders. As time goes by, the effectiveness of data visualization has further provided an easy platform for illustrating large amounts of data. Consequently, the use of advanced data visualization systems has made it easy to investigate and explore the meaning of data in a greater detail (Krum 102). It is also important to note that the implementation of advanced data visualization system plays a huge role in improving the performance levels of an organization in different segments of its operations. Using software modules and tools such as Microsoft Power view, an organization can easily understand its performance levels and benefit from a set of strategically auto generated solutions to performance improvement. For example, in terms of profit, the advanced data visualization system using its internal integrated such as the data the analytics component can use the current market trends to define clear ways of increasing an organization’s profit level (Henschen 50). Lastly but certainly not the least, value addition by advanced data visualization system is brought about by the fact it provides an organization’s top management with a well organized platform for making sound decision for the business progress. This is achieved by collecting, integrating and analyzing the above sets of data to determine the best way forward towards making the most productive business decision. In essence, advanced data visualization facilitates processing of data values related to market trends, customer behaviors and sales volumes. It then performs a thorough analysis of this data using a predefined set of business performance values to provide the top management with a clear decision making criteria for the success of the organization (Iliinsky 82). Limitations Clearly, the integration of advanced data visualization system always provides a significant set of operational benefits to most organizations. This range from increasing the number of customers to provision of a quality platform for making sound business decisions, which is necessary for the achievement of the set out business goals. Regardless of the aforementioned benefits, advanced data visualization has a significant number of limitations, which are as stipulated below (Perez 90). One of the top limitations of advanced data visualization is that it acts as barrier to the insight of a user to a particular crucial business data or subject. This is because, it presents a user with a particular set of visual features, which he or she has to perform close scrutiny of the content (Furht, Borivoje and Armando 105). In this sense, it places the burden of discovery to the user of the advanced data visualization system. Research indicates that a tool that usually places the discovery burden to the user is always a game stopper. Hence, advanced data visualization makes it hard for the users to come up with a clear and perfect judgment of a particular presented set of visual data (Kirk 88). Another major limitation of advanced data visualization is that it is always hard for it withstand processing of the ever-increasing volumes of organization and consumer data. In other words, in the current speedy advancing business world, each organization is fighting tooth and nail to be successful in the global market. This means, advanced data visualization has to adhere to the ever-increasing data volumes that users interact with at a very fast rate over the internet. Considering the intensity of this visual data, it always requires a system to be fast enough for it to deliver quality results necessary for the achievement of the set out business goals. However, for the current advanced data visualization systems, it has always been hard for them to process the speedy increasing data volumes. Instead, the systems end up hanging, crash or processing data that is much less than what is actually supposed to be processed (Perez 49). Advanced data visualization also has the limitation of relying on human evaluation to reveal the hidden conceptual aspects such as market trends and knowledge. Firstly, this provides a user with a huge workload to process (Furht, Borivoje and Armando 65). Secondly and most importantly is that the main problem lies behind the fact that people usually see what they are basically looking for. In this sense, people usually miss the breakthrough evidence of the information that are actually seeking. In essence, that’s the human nature where we actually see what we are conditioned to see and miss the inner details of most objects. On this regard, the reliance on human evaluation is a great limitation in most advanced data visualization systems. That is, most of the output or final result is always lacking a significant set of crucial analytics data necessary for promoting the success of an organization (Yuk and Stephanie 110). Future potential It is vital to note that, in the current speedy advancing technological and business world, the use advanced data visualization has a great potential in becoming part of every organization’s business operations. To be precise, the business world is experiencing several technological changes daily. Alongside this is that, the data requirements for different organizations are on always rise. This means organization stakeholders are exposed into tough conditions where large data volumes need to be analyzed. Research indicates a picture speaks a thousand words. In this sense, it is always easier and friendly to analyze a picture than text. On this regard, through the integration of new technologies, the advanced data analytics has a great room for future success (Iliinsky 37). The use of advanced data visualization can greatly promote its operational abilities through integration of the data mining and data warehousing features. As aforementioned earlier, one of the key limitations in the use of the advanced data visualization systems is that it contains little storage space, which makes it hard to withstand the ever-increasing volumes of organization data. Data warehouse offer terabytes of flexible data storage space. In this sense, the integration of these components provides a long lasting solution to the day-to-day operational challenges of the advanced data visualization system. Consequently, this paves way for the system to be more successful in providing its users with a quality set of useful results (Kirk 9). It is also essential to clarify that the current ever-advancing use of cloud network connectivity provides a great room for enhancing the operations of advanced data visualization systems. To be precise, cloud network connectivity allows an organization to execute its operations on a twenty four-seven (24/7) basis. It also paves way for attracting the global customer base. The integration of these features into the daily operations of the advanced data visualization system creates a great room for it to deliver high quality business oriented results, which will further pave way for it to be regarded as a key module for the success of any organization (Chen 59). Personal reflection Upon a thorough analysis of the functional features and the future potential of the advanced data visualization system, it is important to acknowledge that I see it as a key component in the future of most business operations. Considering the fact that most organization stakeholders are using smart phones to manage and execute their business operations, I greatly believe that the advanced data visualization will be part of the applications used in facilitating several vital business operations (Murray 47). It is also important to outline that the advanced data visualization systems will be a key component in the operations of most knowledge based and expert systems. In essence, I see the advanced data visualization as a module, which will be the building block of most expert systems. A good example of this is the ever-advancing expert system features as seen in the MicroStrategy Visual Insight. This will be important facilitating making of sound decisions for an organization. In general, the use of advanced data visualization systems will be the basis for global competitive advantage of most organizations (Yuk and Stephanie 80). Works cited Chen, Chun-houh. Handbook of Data Visualization: With 50 Tables. Berlin: Springer, 2008. Print. Furht, Borivoje, and Armando Escalante. Handbook of Data Intensive Computing. New York: Springer, 2011. Print. Henschen, Doug. “How To Choose Advanced Data Visualization Tools.” 24 July 2012. Web. 27 Sep. 2014. . Iliinsky, Noah P. N, and Julie Steele. Designing Data Visualizations. Sebastopol, CA: OReilly, 2011. Internet resource. Kirk, Andy. Data Visualization: A Successful Design Process. Birmingham: Packt Pub, 2012. Internet resource. Krum, Randy. Cool Infographics: Effective Communication with Data Visualization and Design. , 2014. Print. Murray, Scott. Interactive Data Visualization for the Web. Sebastopol, CA: OReilly & Associates, 2013. Print. Perez, Ross. “Guest Post: The Future of Data Visualization.” 20 April 2012. Web. 27 Sep. 2014. . Yau, Nathan. Visualize This: The Flowingdata Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics. Indianapolis, Ind: Wiley Pub, 2011. Print. Yuk, Mico, and Stephanie Diamond. Data Visualization for Dummies. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons, 2013. Internet resource. Read More