Deliverable 3-Visualization Tools
Visualization Tools
A simple browser search will uncover what visualization tools are available for use and will reveal hundreds of products that are free, open source, platform specific, or available for purchase. There are several different issues that we need to be aware of before we make a final selection. The most important consideration is your company's visualization needs; create a list essential features and a price range that fits within the budget. To do this, you may need to bring together members of your management team and potential audiences and explain what data visualization tools are and what the need is for them.
Basically, visualization tools can process data from a wide variety of data sources and provide usable information in an easy to understand graphical format. The data used can come from an organization's database, external data sources, or a combination of the two. If designed properly, data depicted in a graphical format is much easier to digest and understand than analyzing the numerical data from which it is extracted.
The main benefit of using data visualization tools is the ease of analyzing data, which leads to timeliness in gaining insights and uncovering trends. This attribute will provide users with more efficiency in obtaining answers to their questions and spotting trends rather than having to crunch numbers and manually developing their own charts and graphs.
To brief your management team and potential audiences on the use of graphical information generated from visualization tools, you will need to conduct some preliminary research. Educate yourself on available visualization tools by researching the benefits of their use, available features, pricing, licensing, training, and support.
The available features in today’s visualization tools are too numerous to mention, but some common functionalities can be found in most of these tools. Simplified standalone visualization software packages will have minimal features as compared to fully integrated business intelligence (BI) solutions that contain a wide array of capabilities such as integrated data analytics and data mining. The most common functionalities shared among all the visualization tools are:
1. Free trial
2. Basic visualizations that include a selection of chart types
3. Drag-and-drop Interactivity
4. Alerts that can be set to identify changes in data
5. Internal and external sharing of visualizations
6. Import and export capabilities
7. Training opportunities
By conducting a standard Firefox browser search using the keywords "visualization tools," numerous sites can be found that lists these tools in a variety of indexes. These indexes range from free, open source, the best, and many standalone products.
To be objective in searches, select sites that permit a sub-search that allows filtering by various classes such as industry, company size by employee, price range, user ratings, deployment method (local or cloud), and platform (Mac OS, Windows, or Linux).
Filtering by class is an important point to consider. You will be using your company’s visualization needs to narrow your search; otherwise, you will spend an insurmountable amount of time examining every visualization tool available. For example, you probably would not research any tools that might be out of your price range or are not able to operate on your in-house platform.
Be aware that many free and open source visualization tools do come with a price tag. Experience has shown that free usually means little or no support, which can be costly if you have become reliant on the product and one or more features begin to fail. Free also means simple without any frills; they might be easy to use, but the final visualizations generated might leave more to be desired.
Open source products can also be free, but most require the need of a computer programmer to run. What you get with open source applications is “source code” that for anyone other than computer programmers generally looks like unreadable gibberish.
With this knowledge at hand, you can begin your research and examine the pros and cons of each visualization tool that fits your company's criteria. Be thorough and remain objective in your research; ensure that the products examined will be well accepted by your company and fellow employees. Make sure that all of the visualization tools examined can expand as your company grows. Many of the visualization offerings have add-ons that can be purchased at a later time when additional features might be required. A final, but important note is the product’s ease of use; be sure the final selected tool is usable by those who will be managing company visualizations or it won’t be put to good use.