Week 9 – Business Analytics and Visualisation

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Consider this picture as a map of the course so far:

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Notice how it’s represented? What are some key things you could learn about informatics by reading this? I take it to mean that the theory, practice and application of informatics take place across many different disciplines. The interesting thing to me is that if you look carefully at how this visualisation represents informatics, it doesn’t actually define it. Why is that?

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Discovery

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The textbook calls ‘discovery’:

Finding something that was previously unknown, or finding out something that was hidden, unspoken or obscure.

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What do you think about this definition? Discovery is finding stuff out, coming up with new ideas and learning about new kinds of information. Another quote from the text

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Discovery implies a new idea has become available to an individual or community who can then store, process, learn from or otherwise use the idea.

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We discover things through research, information systems, other people, personal experience, the internet and many many other ways. Check out this formula:

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Do you know what this means? It is the formula for correlation. Without even realising it we use this as part of business logic all the time. What would be a better way to represent the correlation between two things as part of business informatics? During the 1950′s and 60′s they found a strong correlation between smoking and lung cancer. Some academics believed that this ‘representation’ was not a very accurate depiction of the dangers of smoking because it anecdotal. However, as time has gone on, the evidence has mounted and we now have come to know that there is a strong ‘relationship’ between the two. This discovery is now represented on cigarette packets everywhere!

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Business Analytics

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Business Analytics (BA) is the process of using software tools to analyse organisational data in order to find patterns that will be helpful in creating a better business. It’s about analysing the information and data we have and learning how we can make sense of it and capitalise on it. Consider these examples.

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Example 1

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and

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Example 2

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Both of these examples show show practical uses of Business Analytics. Another physical example of this can be found at the SAS website. This is a world famous company that provides special models for analysing data patterns for corporate decision making. Some of these tools are very expensive and cost quite a lot to implement which says something about their perceived value. These kinds of analytical tools mine existing corporate data looking for new and interesting discoveries to represent. They have uses in Human Resources (i.e. PeopleSoft), Accounting (SAP) and other enterprise resource level systems. A key feature of these modeling tools is there ability to visualise complex data.

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<blockquote cite='http://www.disintimedia.com/?p=122#17'>
Visualisation
Visualisation is basically taking complex data and turning it into an easy form to understand.  A common misunderstanding about accounting data is that every business person can read it and understand it.  A profit and loss sheet may be something an accountant finds easy to read and comprehend, but most small business people will find this a challenge or hire someone else to understand it.  The genius of visualisation is that it makes it easy to understand the very complex data involved business applications.   Consider the example of digg labs. Click here to watch.
Notice the swarming patterns and links being built in real time.  This video above represents the HD-DVD code breaking controversy that happened when DVD makers decided to complain to digg about people posting a code that allowed you to use your HD-DVD region free.   Here’s another example of that shows complex swarms of data. A more famous example of data visualisation can be found in Gapminder.
The point of Business Analytics and Data Visualisation is that it allows us to take the helicopter (systems/strategic) view of our information.  This can help us see new patterns and emergent trends in our data that we weren’t previously aware of.  More to the point, there is growing evidence to suggest that we can use these tools to help us structure new and interesting ways to approach our business lives.  Consider the example given in the literature of using free social media tools for business development.  That’s an interesting use of analytics to search for and support online business models.
</blockquote>

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Visualisation

Visualisation is basically taking complex data and turning it into an easy form to understand. A common misunderstanding about accounting data is that every business person can read it and understand it. A profit and loss sheet may be something an accountant finds easy to read and comprehend, but most small business people will find this a challenge or hire someone else to understand it. The genius of visualisation is that it makes it easy to understand the very complex data involved business applications. Consider the example of digg labs. Click here to watch.

Notice the swarming patterns and links being built in real time. This video above represents the HD-DVD code breaking controversy that happened when DVD makers decided to complain to digg about people posting a code that allowed you to use your HD-DVD region free. Here’s another example of that shows complex swarms of data. A more famous example of data visualisation can be found in Gapminder.

The point of Business Analytics and Data Visualisation is that it allows us to take the helicopter (systems/strategic) view of our information. This can help us see new patterns and emergent trends in our data that we weren’t previously aware of. More to the point, there is growing evidence to suggest that we can use these tools to help us structure new and interesting ways to approach our business lives. Consider the example given in the literature of using free social media tools for business development. That’s an interesting use of analytics to search for and support online business models.

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The Business of Informatics It's all about information