Data Visualization Golden Rules

Last week I posted about a friend of mine, John Brookmyre, who blogged about getting started with cloud computing. It's a great post and John's blog is something that's definately worth keeping an eye on, because he understands and can communicate business intelligence very well in addition to being able to deliver technically in some 20+ platforms.



John's latest post, is about business intelligence data visualization, something that I've been very interested in for the 2 years, and have written about my experiences in the following;

• User Centred Design and Business Intelligence
• Business Intelligence Dashboards

Interestingly, Johns post has been commented on by Tableau Software, who are niche players in the BI market, but among the industry leaders in BI data visualisation. You can trial the software, which I did about 9 months ago when I was looking for alternatives to Microsoft Performance Point Server.



On that occasion the client purchased PPS instead, which we deployed via a customised sharepoint front end. We got round the limitations of both PPS and sharepoint with some clever visualisation tricks and the result was stunning. I'd been reading Stephen Few's blog for a while, (he's a modern day Edward Tufte) and also had some recent experience of heuristic evaluation, which meant I was well up to speed on usability and visualization. If your interested in getting into the subject then these are good places to start.



Back to Tableau though. It's a very interesting product and I wasn't able to get through it all in the 28 days. I managed some very pleasing visualisations involving multiple graphs in a grid formation. The advantages of this being you waste very little space on title's and legends as you benefit from a write once, use many policy. I managed to get 25 graphs on screen (5x5) in a layout that wasn't off-putting, and I could see it working for business users. I've pasted in below an example of the tableau website, that demonstrates the type of visualisation I'm describing. (I like to think that mine was better though!)

Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is becoming ever more important. Some recent headlines;

Tesco is to test putting "carbon labels" on its own-brand products next month in a move to enable consumers to choose products which are less damaging to the environment. Guardian

Marks and Spencer is to begin charging its food shoppers for carrier bags. BBC

Of course Corporate Social Responsibility reporting isn't new in itself, it's the increased focus and level of detail that is changing. As a result, companies will report in ever more detail on these issues and refine their definition of Corporate Social Responsibility. CSR is an increasingly important part of a company’s annual report and CEO’s are making ethics and sustainability claims that need to be backed up. The trend therefore is that CSR data is being treated like financial data which requires greater accountability and accuracy in the reporting of Corporate Social Responsibility objectives, increased levels of corporate governance, and stronger internal control documentation across the enterprise. On the back of increased CSR reporting will come increased auditing requirements as mandated by good corporate governance.

Several governing bodies have arisen to provide guidance and best practice such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). Each of these has their own protocol for calculating and reporting environmental KPI's such as carbon emissions. Invariably these rely on excel spreadsheets that are manually entered, in disparate locations around the field of operation. This is going to become less and less acceptable.

Corporate Social Responsibility data will need to be audited and we'll see security, workflow and audit trail issues seeing increased focus in the capture and reporting of CSR data. Here at Retail Monster Consulting we can help you deliver CSR reporting in a robust and usable manner through Business Intelligence (BI) technology. Our CSR dashboard and data model experience, can help you fast track a CSR implementation.

We are actively blogging about CSR related topics such as Green Credentials and Carbon Labelling.

If any of this interests you then please talk to us

Corporate Performance Management

A healthy and stable business finds the balance between, often competing, stakeholders. A point I try and make in a humorous way in my previous post about my local Off-License. Corporate Performance Management is the new name for what was referred to as the 'balanced scorecard' approach to executive management. This approach aims to balance the competing stakeholders such as employees and shareholders, customers and suppliers.

Limited companies need to provide a good return for their shareholders to do that they need the best staff, who like to be paid well. The more you pay your staff, the less profit you have to distribute amongst your shareholders, or the more you need to charge your customers for goods in order to make the profit, or the harder deal you need to negotiate with suppliers in order to minimise costs, etc etc.... So we have many stakeholders who all have individual needs, which often compete against each other, but to create a sustainable business they all need to be managed well.

Corporate Performance Management, or CPM for short, is about setting upper and lower boundaries for each of these stakeholders and their interests and then monitoring the performance of each to keep within these boundaries. It's CPM that we can blame for staff survey's, who want to know if 'My contribution is recognized by my manager', 'I have an opportunity for career progression' and 'the pay I get for my job is fair'. It's also behind Retailer/Supplier code of ethics and for the rise in Corporate Social Responsibility.

Whilst mostly CPM is used at the executive level, the principal applies equally well within departments. Shops need to balance the wishes of the customer in not having to queue, with the impact on the retail wage budget in having excessive staff manning the checkouts. An area where retailers invest heavily to create the right balance, as discussed in an earlier post on queueing theory. Inventory levels are another key area where the balance between stock and availability needs to managed closely, to minimise the costs of out of stocks and the lost interest of having money tied up in stock instead of in the bank.Sustainable business isn't "all about the numbers", it's a balancing act.