“The Visual Organization” author Phil Simon discusses data visualization tools and their power to modify business conversations.
Big data may be big chaos. But finding clarity — and business opportunities — in that chaos hasn’t ever been more important.
Presenting data clearly and visually is now as important as finding it. Enter data visualization tools that create heat maps, data relationship trees, and geospatial overlays. They offer visual how you can explain a sales trend to the CEO in a couple of minutes. They turn data right into a conversation.
This is the timely subject of Too Big To disregard author Phil Simon’s upcoming book, The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the hunt for Better Decisions (Wiley, 2014), due out next month.
Simon sat down with InformationWeek to debate the right way to become more of a “visual organization,” the perils of being a big data laggard, and more.
IW: Phil, you emphasize in your book, The Visual Organization, that data visibleization is greater than just pie charts and pretty pictures that display data sets. What are key features and functions of recent dataviz tools that help organizations make better decisions?
PS: First, the most effective -of-breed dataviz tools nowadays are sophisticated. They may handle an array of knowledge sources. They’re able to easily accommodate not just internal enterprise data sources like relational databases, but external sources akin to Twitter firehoses, third-party scripts, open datasets, charting libraries, and so on.
Second, they are not restricted to structured data linked via traditional drivers and ETL [extract, transform, load]. Many can handle semi-structured or even unstructured data sources from APIs. Third, they’re interactive; which is, they don’t merely present static data, they encourage data discovery and exploration.
An interactive dataviz tool utilized by Netflix employees to view how content is consumed by date, hour, and category.
Source: Netflix Technology Blog
Fourth, they’re much more user-friendly than the applications of years past. While technical sophistication is useful, you do not have to be a programmer or data scientist to make sense of knowledge in Spotfire or Tableau, as an instance. Finally, they lend themselves to sharing, both internally and for the skin world.
IW: What’s preventing companies from becoming visual organizations? Dataviz tools should not difficult to implement, and popular companies like Netflix and LinkedIn prove they work.
PS: To be fair, most organizations already employ data visualization tools. Microsoft Excel is the classic example. Now, i really like Excel and it has evolved during the last 20 years. Let’s say, PowerQuery is pretty neat. But it is a mistake to believe that Excel can effectively handle all of an organization’s data visualization needs.
Many large organizations implemented expensive business intelligence software within the 1990s and 2000s. Those BI tools, though, are predicated on dashboards, traditional analytics, KPIs, etc. They assume to a enormous extent that a user knows what she or he is seeking.
To answer your question though, old habits die hard. There’s an “ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mindset in lots of organizations. Many employees fear the unknown and stay with tried-and-true tools like Excel. A lot of CXOs insist upon firm ROI calculations before making any new major technology purchase. And let’s not forget that organizations have had for one of the most part dismal batting averages implementing new systems, which was the topic of 1 of my previous books, Why New Systems Fail.
IW: What kinds of businesses have become visual organizations? Which of them are resisting?
PS: Organizations that understand the possible power of information (big and small) are jumping on board first. Companies like Cisco, Pandora, ESPN, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, eBay, and others are discovering fascinating things
Next Page
Shane O’Neill is Managing Editor for InformationWeek. Ahead of joining InformationWeek, he served in various roles at CIO.com, most notably as assistant managing editor and senior writer covering Microsoft. He has also been an editor and writer at eWeek and TechTarget. … View Full Bio
More Insights