Top 6 Data Visualization Tools for Business Professionals

Data is a powerful tool. It empowers businesses to recognize trends, conduct analyses, make informed decisions, and set realistic goals. And yet, a company can have all of the data it needs to be successful and still fail if no one knows how to understand or leverage it.
Datasets can seem like an alien language to many in an organization outside of the analytics team. This is where data visualization comes into play. Using data visualization, professionals can take raw data and turn it into something easy to interpret.Below is an overview of what data visualization is and why it’s important, along with a list of some of the top data visualization tools available to business professionals.WHAT IS DATA VISUALIZATION?Data visualization is the process of creating a visual representation of the information within a dataset.While there are hundreds of ways to visualize data, some of the most common data visualization techniques include:

Pie charts

Bar charts

Histograms

Gantt charts

Heat maps

Box-and-whisker plots

Waterfall charts

Area charts

Scatter plots

Infographics

WHY IS DATA VISUALIZATION IMPORTANT?Visually depicting data often makes it easier to understand and draw insights from. As such, data visualization is an effective means of making data more accessible across an organization. This, in turn, can empower employees to back their actions using concrete information instead of relying on assumptions—resulting in more data-driven organizational processes.Data visualization can also play an important role in communication with parties outside of a business, such as the media, investors, regulatory agents, and other stakeholders.Data visualization has become so important to modern business that many organizations are now specifically hiring individuals proficient in it, among other data science skills.WHAT ARE DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS?A data visualization tool is a form of software that's designed to visualize data. Each tool's capabilities vary but, at their most basic, they allow you to input a dataset and visually manipulate it. Most, but not all, come with built-in templates you can use to generate basic visualizations.DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS FOR BUSINESS1. Microsoft Excel (and Power BI)In the strictest sense, Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet software, not a data visualization tool. Even so, it has useful data visualization capabilities. Given that Microsoft products are widely used at the enterprise level, you may already have access to it.According to Microsoft's documentation, you can use Excel to design at least 20 types of charts using data in spreadsheets. These include common options, such as bar charts, pie charts, and scatter plots, to more advanced ones like radar charts, histograms, and treemaps.There are limitations to what you can create in Excel. If your organization is looking for a more powerful data visualization tool but wants to stay within the Microsoft ecosystem, Power BI is an excellent alternative. Built specifically as a data analytics and visualization tool, Power BI can import data from various sources and output visualizations in a range of formats.For professionals interested in creating interactive data visualizations destined to live on the internet, Google Charts is a popular free option.The tool can pull data from various sources—including Salesforce, SQL databases, and Google Sheets—and uses HTML5/SVG technology to generate charts, which makes them incredibly accessible. It offers 18 types of charts, including bar charts, pie charts, histograms, geo charts, and area charts.Members of the Google community occasionally generate new charts and share them with other users, which are arranged in a gallery on Google's website. These charts tend to be more advanced but may not be HTML5-compliant.Tableau is one of the most popular data visualization tools on the market for two main reasons: It’s relatively easy to use and incredibly powerful. The software can integrate with hundreds of sources to import data and output dozens of visualization types—from charts to maps and more. Owned by Salesforce, Tableau boasts millions of users and community members, and it's widely used at the enterprise level.Tableau offers several products, including desktop, server, and web-hosted versions of its analytics platform, along with customer relationship management (CRM) software.A free option, called Tableau Public, is also available. It's important to note, however, that any visualizations created on the free version are available for anyone to see. This makes it a good option to learn the software's basics, but it's not ideal for any proprietary or sensitive data.Zoho Analytics is a data visualization tool specifically designed for professionals looking to visualize business intelligence. As such, it's most commonly used to visualize information related to sales, marketing, profit, revenues, costs, and pipelines with user-friendly dashboards. More than 500,000 businesses and two million users currently leverage the software.Zoho Analytics has several paid options, depending on your needs. There's also a free version that allows you to build a limited number of reports, which can be helpful if you're testing the waters to determine which tool is best for your business.There are many other tools that work similarly to Zoho Analytics and are tailored to sales and marketing professionals. HubSpot and Databox are two examples, both of which include powerful data visualization capabilities.Datawrapper is a tool that, like Google Charts, is used to generate charts, maps, and other graphics for use online. The tool's original intended audience was reporters working on news stories, but any professional responsible for managing a website can find value in it.While Datawrapper is easy to use, it's somewhat limited, especially compared to others on this list. One of the primary limitations is that it doesn't integrate with data sources. Instead, you must manually copy and paste data into the tool, which can be time-consuming and liable to error if you aren't careful.Some common outputs include scatterplots, line charts, stacked bar charts, pie charts, range plots, and a variety of maps and tables. Free and paid options are available, depending on how you intend to use the tool.Infogram is another popular option that can be used to generate charts, reports, and maps.What sets Infogram apart from the other tools on this list is that you can use it to create infographics (where its name comes from), making it especially popular among creative professionals. Additionally, the tool includes a drag-and-drop editor, which can be helpful for beginners.Visualizations can be saved as image files and GIFs to be embedded in reports and documents, or in HTML to be used online. Like most of the other tools on this list, Infogram has tiered pricing, ranging from a free to enterprise-level version.VISUALIZATIONS ARE ONLY AS GOOD AS THE DATA BEHIND THEMData visualization is an effective way to communicate with data, and there are several tools you can use to create compelling graphics.It's important to note that visualizations are only as good as the data you leverage to create them. When data is incorrect or faulty, it can lead to misleading visualizations or, worse, misleading insights. This, in turn, can have serious business and legal implications.

That’s why you should gain a basic understanding of data science if you're interested in data visualization. Doing so can enable you to identify bad or faulty data and avoid the negative consequences of poor data visualization. An online analytics course, completed in as little as four weeks, can help develop this knowledge.

數據是一個強大的工具。它使企業能夠識別趨勢、進行分析、做出明智的決策並設定現實的目標。然而，一家公司可能擁有成功所需的所有數據，但如果沒有人知道如何理解或利用這些數據，它仍然會失敗。對於分析團隊之外的組織中的許多人來說，數據集似乎是一種陌生的語言。這就是數據可視化發揮作用的地方。使用數據可視化，專業人員可以將原始數據轉換成易於解釋的內容。下面概述了什麼是數據可視化以及為什麼它很重要，同時列出了一些可供業務專業人員使用的頂級數據可視化工具。數據可視化是在數據集中創建信息的可視化表示的過程。雖然有數百種方法來可視化數據，一些最常見的數據可視化技術包括:

餅圖

柱狀圖

柱狀圖

甘特圖

熱點圖

Box-and-whisker情節

瀑布圖

面積圖

散點圖

信息圖

地圖

直觀地描述數據往往更容易理解和得出見解。因此，數據可視化是使數據在整個組織中更容易訪問的有效手段。反過來，這可以讓員工使用具體的信息來支持他們的行動，而不是依賴於假設——導致更多的數據驅動的組織過程。數據可視化還可以在與企業外部各方(如媒體、投資者、監管機構和其他利益相關者)的溝通中發揮重要作用。數據可視化對於現代企業已經變得如此重要，以至於許多組織現在都在專門招聘精通it和其他數據科學技能的個人。數據可視化工具是一種用於可視化數據的軟體形式。每個工具的功能各不相同，但在最基本的情況下，它們允許您輸入數據集並可視化地操作它。大多數(但不是全部)都帶有內置模板，您可以使用它們生成基本的可視化效果。嚴格來說，Microsoft Excel是一個電子表格軟體，而不是一個數據可視化工具。即便如此，它也具有有用的數據可視化功能。考慮到Microsoft產品在企業級別廣泛使用，您可能已經可以訪問它。根據微軟的文檔，你可以使用Excel用電子表格中的數據設計至少20種圖表。這些選項包括柱狀圖、餅狀圖和散點圖等常見選項，也包括雷達圖、直方圖和樹形圖等更高級的選項。在Excel中創建的內容是有局限性的。如果您的組織正在尋找更強大的數據可視化工具，但又想留在微軟的生態系統中，Power BI是一個很好的選擇。Power BI專門作為數據分析和可視化工具構建，可以從各種來源導入數據，並以各種格式輸出可視化結果。對於有意創建交互式數據可視化的專業人員來說，谷歌圖表是一個流行的免費選擇。該工具可以從各種來源(包括Salesforce、SQL資料庫和谷歌表)提取數據，並使用HTML5/SVG技術生成圖表，這使得它們非常容易訪問。它提供了18種圖表，包括柱狀圖、餅圖、直方圖、地理圖和區域圖。谷歌社區的成員偶爾會生成新的圖表並與其他用戶分享，這些圖表被安排在谷歌網站的圖庫中。這些圖表往往更先進，但可能不符合html5。Tableau是市場上最流行的數據可視化工具之一，主要有兩個原因:它相對容易使用，功能強大。該軟體可以與數百個數據源集成，導入數據並輸出數十種可視化類型——從圖表到地圖等等。Tableau屬於Salesforce，擁有數百萬用戶和社區成員，在企業層面廣泛使用。Tableau提供多種產品，包括其分析平臺的桌面、伺服器和網絡託管版本，以及客戶關係管理(CRM)軟體。還有一個免費的選擇，叫做Tableau Public。但是，需要注意的是，在免費版本上創建的任何可視化都可以讓任何人看到。這使它成為學習軟體基礎知識的一個很好的選擇，但對於任何專有或敏感數據來說，它不是理想的選擇。Zoho Analytics是一款數據可視化工具，專為想要可視化商業智能的專業人士設計。因此，它最常用來可視化與銷售、營銷、利潤、收入、成本和具有用戶友好的儀錶板的管道相關的信息。目前有超過50萬家企業和200萬用戶使用該軟體。根據你的需求，Zoho Analytics有多種付費選擇。還有一個免費版本，允許您構建數量有限的報告，如果您正在進行測試，以確定哪種工具最適合您的業務，它會很有幫助。還有許多工具與Zoho Analytics類似，是為銷售和市場營銷專業人士量身定製的。HubSpot和Databox就是兩個例子，它們都包含強大的數據可視化功能。Datawrapper是一個工具，像谷歌圖表一樣，用於生成圖表、地圖和其他在線使用的圖形。該工具最初的目標受眾是從事新聞報導工作的記者，但任何負責管理網站的專業人士都可以從中發現價值。雖然Datawrapper很容易使用，但它有一定的局限性，特別是與此列表中的其他工具相比。主要的限制之一是它不能與數據源集成。相反，您必須手動將數據複製並粘貼到工具中，如果不小心的話，這可能非常耗時，而且容易出錯。一些常見的輸出包括散點圖、折線圖、堆疊條形圖、餅圖、範圍圖以及各種地圖和表格。有免費和付費選項，這取決於您打算如何使用該工具。信息圖是另一個流行的選項，可以用來生成圖表、報告和地圖。信息圖與其他工具的區別在於，你可以用它來創建信息圖(它的名字就是從這裡來的)，這使得它在創意專業人士中特別受歡迎。此外，該工具還包括一個拖放編輯器，這對初學者很有幫助。可視化內容可以保存為圖像文件和gif文件，嵌入到報告和文檔中，或者保存為在線使用的HTML文件。與本列表中的大多數工具一樣，Infogram也有分級定價，從免費版本到企業級版本不等。數據可視化是一種與數據進行通信的有效方式，有幾種工具可以用來創建引人注目的圖形。需要注意的是，可視化效果的好壞取決於您用來創建它們的數據。當數據不正確或錯誤時，它可能導致誤導性的可視化，或者更糟糕的是，誤導性的見解。反過來，這可能會產生嚴重的業務和法律影響。這就是為什麼如果您對數據可視化感興趣，那麼您應該對數據科學有一個基本的了解。這樣做可以讓您識別壞的或錯誤的數據，並避免糟糕的數據可視化帶來的負面後果。只需四周時間就能完成的在線分析課程，可以幫助開發這方面的知識。