Data Visualization – Communicating Information Clearly & Effectively:

How many of our daily business decisions can be attributed to the use of true quality information? Where are you getting your information from and how are you analyzing it? Ask yourself: “Am I willing  to make mission-critical decisions with data that is not entirely intact to begin with?”  It happens more than you would expect.  The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) estimates that data quality problems associated with customer contact data alone cost U.S. businesses more than $600 billion per year.

John Tukey, the famous American mathematician once said: “The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data”  Hard to swallow for many, but truly a profound statement.  In order to achieve success in business, we must learn how to (1) wait until we have established a ‘quality database’ before making decisions from it, and (2) maximize the effectiveness of how we are visualizing and interpreting this information (uber important!).

Take for instance Procter & Gamble’s institutionalized approach to data visualization – The groundbreaking “Business Sphere” environment, and “Business Sufficiency Analytic Models.” – were both built to improve productivity and collaboration seamlessly so that P&G can focus on innovating for the consumer.  In his recent Harvard Business Review article, Tom Davenport sheds additional light into the intricate steps P&G is taking to ensure decision-makers are equipped with actionable data. “P&G has placed visual displays of key information on desktops – over 50,000 P&G employees now have access to a “Decision Cockpit“, which provides decision makers with dynamic and powerful decision making tools all in one place.  In addition to the desktop approach, P&G has created meeting spaces that it calls “Business Spheres” & implemented them in over 50 locations where management information is showcased for review.  This strategically enables the framework for data visualization to always be kept top of mind throughout the entire organization.

The most important attribute of successful data visualization is in the simplicity of the message portrayed – in whether the decision makers “understand quickly what’s going on in the business, and decide what to do about it.”  If organizational leaders are forced to spend too much time making sense of problem areas, the issues may never be resolved.

Related articles

• The Art of Data Visualization: How to Tell Complex Stories Through Smart Design (openculture.com)
• The Three Elements of Successful Data Visualizations (blogs.hbr.org)
• BI Basics – Who Needs Business Intelligence (dattatreysindol.com)
• An Exploration of the Art of Data Visualization [Video] (geekosystem.com)
• Spreadsheet Reporting | Your Executive Reporting is Outdated | Domo | Blog (domo.com)

With Lucky Sort creators on board, Twitter is officially a data company

Reblogged this on UberTechMedia This move by #Twitter is intriguing– they already have promoted tweets… GigaOM reminds us all of Twitter’s organic growth potential – #hashtags being the most prized asset underlying Twitter’s entire business model.

Gigaom

We all kind of knew that Twitter’s path to making money was paved with data, and the announcement on Monday that it’s buying analytics startup Lucky Sort makes it official. Unless I’m totally misreading the writing on the wall, this move is all about giving advertisers — and anyone, in theory — the tools to learn about what people are talking about.

Word that Lucky Sort is shutting down and that several of its team are joining Twitter’s revenue engineering department suggests this is exactly what the acquisition aims to accomplish.

As it stands, companies use Twitter as a way to track how people are talking about them and maybe, if they’re really advanced, do some sentiment analysis. If they’re willing to pay a third party, Datasift and Gnip are more than happy to broaden marketers’ views to encompass the entirety of Twitter’s data, both real-time and historical. What…

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No Social Media No Hires

Mind boggling perhaps, but certainly true! Take some time to assess your social footprint & ask yourself – “Do I invest enough time in building quality connections?”

Google+

At The Mic

Reactions ran from disbelief to total agreement.  The issue was  a news story indicating that 25% of job seekerswould not take a job if they could not use social media.  Now on the face of this, and given our economy, this sounds pretty silly.  A pay check is a pay check you could say.  However, when you are on the job and your constantly  faced with a broken copier,  a computer with a boot up time you can track with a calendar, or a phone system that always loses voice mails, what do you get?  ..Frustrated.  Frustrated because you don’t have the tools to do your job.  

The 25% who won’t take a job without social media access are telling us the world has changed.  The tools we need to do our job have changed.  Cutting edge is something every business aspires to be,  or at least…

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Enhancing Your Professional Profile: Job Hunting and Social Media

Personal Branding Essentials…

Letters from the Library

On Thursday I went up to the MMU Business School to attend an afternoon of talks as part of our regular training schedule. The theme this month was Job Hunting and Social Media, and there were three sessions over the course of the afternoon on different aspects of this topic.

 

The first session was entitled “Amazing Applications”, and was run by the University’s Careers Service. There were a couple of good points raised during this session, such as the importance of mirroring the employer’s language in your application (are they groovy and relaxed, like Innocent, or businesslike, like Barclays?) to show you’ll fit in with their culture and the need for clear structure in your answers. I liked the advice about using the STAR technique when giving evidence of competencies (list the Situation, Task, Action, and Result) as well. Apart from this, though, I felt that this was a…

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Article: What LinkedIn’s acquisition of Pulse means for content marketing and enterprise networks

What LinkedIn’s acquisition of Pulse means for content marketing and enterprise networks: http://www.customerthink.com/blog/what_linkedin_s_acquisition_of_pulse_means_for_content_marketing_and_enterprise_networks