Introducing Interactive Visual Analysis

A new generation of business intelligence capabilities is emerging. Interactive Visual Analysis is a game change in how data is being used in business. Through intuitive and interactive visual interfaces, subject matter experts can become data analysts, applying their experience to quickly understand the meaning and importance of data in making better decisions.

These interactive visual analysis applications – often referred to as data visualizations or dashboards – are helping to identify opportunities and threats faster, to optimize resource allocation, and to increase the rate of innovation to bring new capabilities to market. Knowledge workers use these interactive metaphors to identify and solve business problems that require sophisticated analysis of multidimensional data.

With Interactive Visual Analysis, organizations reduce reporting costs, make better decisions and increase the overall competitiveness of the company.

How is Interactive Visual Analysis Different?

It is not easy to create a self-service interface in which business users can intuitively explore and understand high volumes of data. Traditionally, business intelligence tools have attempted to accomplish this through end-user dashboards that link static reports and expose development tools. But simple dashboard gauges fail to capture complex business problems. At the same time, the number of columns and rows in static reports has grown well beyond end users’ ability to quickly get meaning from the data. And, both dashboards and static reports fail to consider more than a few dimensions of data – thus failing to provide a true representation of today’s more sophisticated business environments.

Applications with an intuitive, visual workspace can represent business information in more meaningful ways. By presenting information as interactive pictures, visualizations can combine data from thousands of static reports into easily digestible formats. Users can select data elements, filters, highlighting, and display options to change data perspectives – from high-level overviews down to the lowest levels of detail. Leveraging the human ability to recognize patterns, Interactive Visual Analysis uses time-based GANTT charts, bubble charts, heat maps and newer visual metaphors to aid users in understanding information.

While graphical elements such as line and pie charts might be included in a static report, they display data in only one or two dimensions and cannot show relationships with data in other reports. More sophisticated analysis requires viewing additional reports or even requests to build custom reports. By providing a fluid interaction model to drill down for explanation, zoom out for context, and overlay dimensions as if the data were a map with points of interest from street level to citywide views, Interactive Visual Analysis enables the user to quickly and easily create meaningful data perspectives without calling on IT staff.

Next: Capabilities for Data Discovery and Business Alignment