Full Sail Partners Blog | Business Intelligence (3)

Business Intelligence (BI) puts together business analytics, data mining, data visualization, technology resources along with the best practices to help companies make more data-driven decisions. Business intelligence can help businesses make better choices by displaying present and historical data in their business context. Analysts can use data visualization to provide performance and competitor benchmarks for a smoother and more efficiently run organization. Analysts can also detect market trends to boost sales or income more quickly. Making sure you are using BI and data visualization properly is important. Let’s look at how you can choose the right data visualizations for your company.

Temporal Visualizations

In the temporal category, data visualizations belong if they satisfy two conditions: they are linear, and they are one-dimensional. Temporal visualizations normally have lines that either stand alone or intersect with each other, with starting and ending time. Some common examples of data visualizations include scatter plots, time series sequences, timelines, line graphs, and polar area diagrams. These visualizations are usually pretty easy to recognize and understand. Picking the right visualization all depends on the kind of story you are trying to tell. When choosing a temporal visualization, your end goal should be comparing one or many value sets. This can help you easily show the low and high values of a data set.

Hierarchical Visualizations

In the hierarchical category, data visualizations are those that organize groups within larger groups. These are best used to display clusters of information, especially if they flow from one point to another. Typical hierarchical visualizations are tree diagrams, ring charts, and sunburst diagrams. Just like any type of data visualization, it is important that you are effectively telling a story with the graphics that you use. For this type, showing levels of importance coming from a single source is the main purpose of these visualizations. The only downside is that these graphs tend to be complex and sometimes difficult to read. The tree diagram is used most frequently because of its easy-to-follow linear path.

Multidimensional Visualizations

While linear data is easier to understand, sometimes you have the need to capture your audience’s attention. Multidimensional displays two or more different variables to create a 3D data visualization. These types of visualizations are scatter plots, pie charts, Venn diagrams, stacked bar graphs, and histograms. These visuals can break down a ton of data into key takeaways, making it easier to clearly identify what you are trying to get across. Multidimensional is used to compare data and parts of a whole and show relationships between two variables. With multidimensional data, you are able to choose different colors and shapes to really customize your graphic.

Data Visualization Makes an Impact

Choosing the right visualization for your data directly impacts how it gets across to the viewers. Your main goal should always be to properly tell a story with the graphics that you use. Data visualization allows you to display specific data in an eye-catching way leading to a successful conveyance of important and relevant information.

Business analytics has become increasingly important for professional services firms. However, finding a business intelligence (BI) tool that works with Deltek Vision and gives us the analytics we want has been challenging. We need flexibility, customization and ease of use to answer important questions about our firms yet often we find that this type of analysis is not accessible in Vision. Thus, we are faced with the export/import/number crunch process in an external tool like Excel plus countless hours spent doing the calculations over and over. We need a better solution, instant access, and easy updates.

Enter Informer 5

Introducing Informer 5, the BI tool which works with Deltek Vision to make instant analytics readily available. Informer 5 is an integrated customizable interface to Vision data for use in various analytical scenarios. Using the Blackbox Connector, direct integration with Vision is now a reality.

You simply select the data fields you want in your database including standard Vision fields, User Defined Fields, and User Defined Info Centers, and you’ll quickly be able to visually see project metrics, employee measurements, marketing results, and firm forecasting. You’ll be able to answer questions such as:

• How are my projects performing?
• How is that new branch office doing?
• Are my employees billing enough hours?
• How is the firm doing compared to the last three years?

Also, remember those spreadsheets with all that data we built over the past years? Informer 5 can integrate this data with your Vision data. No need to reinvent the wheel, we can use it as a data source. Other data sources? Informer 5 can access those too.

Visualize Your Data with Informer 5

Are you interested in where your work is being done and where the profits are made? Well, Informer 5 also includes geographical presentations including maps. You can easily visualize and determine these specifics with Informer 5. You can even find the numbers behind the pictures. Informer 5 has built in drill down capabilities that can take you directly to the detail data. From Profit Center to Project Manager, Project Manager to Project, and all the way down to line item detail, data can be acquired with Informer 5, and all of this can be gathered from the same graph with no need to run additional reports.

Make Smarter Decisions with Informer 5

On a final note, the Informer 5 package includes set calculations for many of our industry standard metrics. Additional calculations can be added to customize this solution for any firm. Also, firm data can be updated regularly on schedule or updated on demand from Vision. It is up to you. So, with all of these awesome features of Informer 5 and its integration with Vision, isn’t it time for your firm to start making smarter decisions?