As an owner of a medium-sized business (SMB), there are a typical range of concerns that you may take, depending on the specific circumstances.To navigate challenges and drive your business towards growth, one area that you may consider is taking advantage of your resources efficiency and narrowing down wasting any of them. In this scenario, putting data visualization in implementation might push you back. Therefore, the question is “Do SMBs really need data visualization?”
In this blog post, we’ll explore some reasons why SMEs haven't implemented data visualization solutions and the opportunities big data brings to business in this fast-paced technological landscape. We also discover the benefits of data visualization and which characteristics SME owners should consider when choosing the suitable visualization tool. Therefore, aftering this article, you might answer the question above and make the right decision whether or not to deploy a data visualization tool to your business!
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) still impede using data visualization tools, mostly because they haven't known the benefits of data visualization tools. Below are some reasons why:
Many data visualization tools are expensive
In comparison with large organizations, SMEs have limited resources. These can be small teams, restricted budgets, and the lack of skilled IT staff to implement and maintain visualization tools effectively. Moreover, many data visualization tools cost from hundred to thousands dollars that may hinder them from implementing data solutions for their businesses. In this situation, data visualization tool for implementation is not their top priority
Disparate data sources
Data pours to business from different sources. Meanwhile, SMEs need accurate and well-structured data being visualized for a more efficient decision-making process. Ensuring data quality and data integration may be complicated, hence, made it hard for the deployment of data visualization tools
It's unnecessary for a data visualization tool
Some may think that they can get straightforward solutions without the need of data visualization. They can read and understand data, metrics in dataset, or they can get quick insights through visualization in Excel- a very popular tool for creating charts and dashboarding. That’s why they might ignore the benefits of data visualization tools. It is a nice-to-have tool, but spending money on it is not worth it.
Before we talk about the future of data visualization tools, you might agree with me that data is everywhere and comes from many types of formats. As businesses grow, data is more and more complex and huge, so, SMEs need more insights, accurate decisions to stay ahead of their competitors. That is the reason why data visualization is more important than ever!
For instance, financial services companies want to help you see where your money is going. Your e-commerce website needs to know where traffic is coming, card abandonment rates, etc. When the data is vast, it's time you do need a data visualization to tell you what's the problem so that you can deliver quick insights, troubleshoot issues quickly. Or else, you lose your customers, revenues, which are harmful to your business
Did you know that the overall amount of data generated, acquired, duplicated, and used globally is anticipated to increase dramatically, reaching 64.2 zettabytes in 2020. Global data production is expected to increase over the following five years, up to 2025, to more than 180 zettabytes.
You can read this blog post to find more interesting data statistics!
Statistics and numbers emphasized the importance of data visualization and definitely, its future is promising!
When you are in the early stages of your business, you and other involved parties need to see the bigger picture of your business so that you can make the right decisions. That's when you need information collected being translated visually, in a way that is easy and understandable. Now, let's dive into 5 benefits of data visualization tools that SMEs need to know!
Conventional techniques of data analysis, for example: spreadsheets or manual calculations can be time-consuming, especially when working with vast and complicated datasets. Meanwhile, data visualization tools allow SMEs to analyze data promptly and effectively so that you can spot patterns, trends and insights.
Another aspect is real-time data updates. Getting the most up-to-date information is really important for them to make accurate analyses. Many visualization tools allow SMEs to connect directly to their data sources and immediately update visuals as new data becomes available. So, they can get rid of the need for manual updates if using traditional data tools.
Other than that, many data visualization tools are not just functioning to visualize data into graphics, they can come with automated report capabilities. You can design customized reports or established templates that update immediately with the most recent data. It helps to save significant time and the manual reporting process.
With such a large amount of data being generated every minute, with appropriate visualization such as charts, graphs, you can grasp information quickly and easily, enabling them to uncover patterns, trends, and insights that may have otherwise been overlooked. Then, the decision-making process will be quick and efficient.
Every decision is undoubtedly essential and has a great impact on the whole business. As a SME owner, it might not be good if the decision is made by guessing or intuition. Decisions made by numbers and facts are more reliable and accurate. Therefore, SMEs can analyze and translate data in visualization to help them make timely and informed decisions.
SMEs need to track their performance frequently in order to identify blocks, problems and quickly drive solutions fixing those issues. Therefore, they need to investigate time and effort to build dashboards tracking their performance. Manually updating data and creating a dashboard is not a feasible approach. Therefore, you really need automatically updating dashboard with critical insights.
Data visualization tools help SMEs visualize and explore historical data, understand past and current trends so that they can make more informed predictions about the results. By utilizing the insights gathered from data analysis, SMEs can develop strategic decisions and forecast the future direction of their business.
Using traditional methods of visualization like textual reports or spreadsheets might take your team time to elaborating and communicating data to your stakeholders. Data Visualization Tools can help. Additionally, many modern data visualization tools nowadays have many features to streamline communication, collaboration and management processes among your team members with tracking, monitoring and alerting functions. Therefore, they help to reduce your repetitive working time to focus on your core.
Determining to deploy a new tool for the growth of your business might mull you over. Moreover, visualizing data can be complicated. So, you should choose the right tool to get you the most of it.
Dataflake is a highly customizable data visualization and embedded analytics tool that helps your business tell better data stories, for more efficient data-driven decisions. Dataflake is perfect for small and medium-sized businesses like yours. Deploying Dataflake for your business and empowering the potential of the benefits of data visualization tools!
Try Dataflake from today!
