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Now You See It! – How Data Visualisation Works

April 15, 2011 by

The human brain can process a picture much faster than a table of numbers. To understand why, we must recognise the close relationship between vision and cognition. Seeing and thinking work closely to allow us make sense of our world. It is no coincidence that many words we use to describe understanding are metaphors for sight e.g. ‘insight’, ‘illumination’ and of course, ‘I see’.

Vision is by far our most powerful and cognitively efficient sense. When we represent information in visual form, our ability to think about it is dramatically enhanced. Visualisation makes available in front of our eyes more information than we could possibly hold at once in our mind. In simple terms, information visualisation makes us think.

Read more about analysis and reporting through Data Visualisation.

Contact Delphi Analytics to discuss your analysis and reporting needs.

Read More: Stephen Few, Now You See It – Simple Visualisation Techniques for Quantitative Analysis (Oakland, 2009)

 

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Creating the Information Advantage

April 15, 2011 by

Data is power. The quantity and rapid growth of business data represents a real opportunity. More information about your customers, your market, and your suppliers is one of the few proprietary assets available to you.

From Wikileaks to Facebook, the new influencers are those who understand the power of data in all its forms. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the web. It is difficult to think of a successful web company whose asset is anything other than data; YouTube, Facebook or Google. However, creating business value from data is not just the realm of the web media giants. All businesses generate increasing quantities of data on a daily basis. The quantity and rapid growth of our business data represents a real opportunity.

Think of it this way. Many of the previous bases for competition are no longer available. Unique geographical advantage doesn’t matter in global competition, and protective regulation is largely gone. Proprietary technologies are rapidly copied, and break-through innovation in products or services seems increasingly difficult to achieve. What’s left as a basis for competition is to execute your business with maximum efficiency and effectiveness, and to make the smartest business decisions possible. Creating an Information Advantage is one of the few defensible advantages over time.

If you are concerned that you could be getting more value from your business data, contact Delphi Analytics. We will help you develop your Information Advantage.

Read More: Thomas H. Davenport, Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning (Boston, 2007)

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Good Analysts – How Can They Help Me?

January 6, 2011 by

Progress in technologies that allow us to collect, store and access data have largely ignored the primary tool that makes information meaningful and useful: the human brain.  Computers can’t make sense of data; only people can.  More precisely, only people who have developed the necessary data analysis skills can. Analysts take something apart to understand it better. We do this to solve problems or generate insight . Our goal is to help businesses make better decisions and improve their sales and profit performance.

A common misconception about ‘Analysts’ is that all we do is ‘crunch numbers’. In truth, analytics is the ability to look at the data and then turn that into a story. Good Analysts are good storytellers. This is one of the reasons we like to work through problems visually. Because seeking and thinking work closely together, visualisation helps us understand the data better and allows the story unfold naturally.

Analysts are often not the subject specialist in the room. In fact their independence and their ability to take a holistic approach to a business challenge is the essence of what they bring to the team.

If you have a story to tell and you need the expertise of good Analysts to help tell it, contact Delphi Analytics.

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