IT for Management: On-Demand Strategies for

Performance, Growth, and Sustainability

Eleventh Edition
Turban, Pollard, Wood

Chapter 11

Data Visualization and Geographic

Information Systems
Learning Objectives (1 of 4)
Copyright ©2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2
Data Visualization: Terminology
• Data visualization
o Presentation of data in a graphical format
o Easier for decision makers to grasp difficult concepts or
identify new patterns in the data
• Drill down
o Searching for something on a computer moving from general
information to more detailed in-formation by focusing in on
something of interest, e.g., quarterly sales – monthly sales –
daily sales
• Geospatial data
o Has an explicitly geographic component, ranging from vector
and raster data to tabular data with site locations
Copyright ©2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 3
Data Visualization Technologies

Figure 11.3 Tools and technologies in this chapter fall into three related
categories.

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Data Visualization and Learning
• Learning, Exploring, and Discovery with Visualization
o Data discovery: discovering hidden relationships through
visualization.
o Used with predictive analytics to improve departmental
decisions.
o Summary data rather than statistical data for higher level
absorption.

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Data Visualization: Heat Maps
• The heat map is like a spreadsheet whose cells are
formatted with colors instead of numbers. This heat
map uses three colors to convey information at a
glance.

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An example of a Heat Map

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Examples of Visualizations
• Dials, charts, graphs,
timelines, geospatial maps,
and heat maps with
interactivity and drill-downs
making it easier to
understand data and identify
patterns, trends, and
relationships
• Require human expertise to
interpret

Copyright ©2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 8

Figure 11.7: Data Discovery Tools pull data from multiple data sources,
manipulates the data and displays the metrics
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Data Visualization Tools
• Performance Management Visualizations
o SAS Visual Catalyst
• Intelligent auto-charting feature presents most appropriate
visualization of a set of data
o IBM SPSS Analytic Catalyst
• Advanced analysis designed for experts in statistical
software
o IBM Watson Analytics
• Cloud-based, automates predictive analytics

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Big Data Visualization Challenges
o Speed, size, and diversity of big data brings new challenges to
visualization.
o One challenge is how to display the results of data discovery
in a meaningful way that is not overwhelming.
o For example, you may need to collapse and condense the
results to display graphs and charts in a way that decision
makers are accustomed to viewing.
o Results may also need to be available quickly on mobile
devices, and users may want to be able to easily explore the
data on their own in real time.

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Big Data Visualization Challenges
o Another issue associated with big data is the speed within
which traditional architectures and software can process the
data.
o If the data are not processed in a timely manner, the data may
not be accurate or useful, for example, stock market data.
o For example, IBM SPSS integrates three visualization tools to
handle big data—Netezza, InfoSphere BigInsights, and
InfoSphere Streams—to provide comprehensive analytics
capabilities in the big data platform.
o Netezza is a high-performance data warehouse whose data
can be used for model building, scoring, and model refresh;
InfoSphere BigInsights is an enterprise-ready distribution of
Hadoop.
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How Is Data Visualization Used in
Business?
o The ultimate goal of data analytics is to drive profits, and
often that depends on learning how to manage assets, such as
inventory, or engage customers in a smarter way. Collecting
data is relatively easy. Making sense of that data is not.

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How Is Data Visualization Used in
Business?
o The latest data visualization software addresses issues
associated with processing big data by speeding up data
discovery and returns the visualization within an appropriate
timeframe, in an easy-to-understand format.
o BI and data visualization vendors are working to assist
business analysts and nontechnical users in determining how
best to display these massive amounts of data.

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Data Visualization and Learning Review
1. How does data visualization contribute to learning?
2. How do heat maps convey information?
3. Why are data visualization and discovery usage
increasing?
4. Give two examples of data visualization for
performance management.

Copyright ©2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 15

Learning Objectives (2 of 4)
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Enterprise Mashups

• Combine business data and applications from

multiple sources—typically a mix of internal data
and applications with externally sourced data to
create an integrated experience.
• Does not require a huge investment and can be
developed in hours rather than days or weeks.

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Enterprise Data Mashups

• Combinations of data from various business

systems and external sources, often in real time,
without necessarily relying on a middle step of
ETL (extract, transform, and load) from a data
warehouse.

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Enterprise Data Mashups
o For organizations, mashup apps decrease IT implementation
costs over traditional, custom software development and
significantly simplify business workflows—both increase the
ROI (return on investment) of mashup implementations.
o Point-and-click dashboard building is a common feature in
data mashups. These mashup technologies provide visually
rich and secure enterprise apps created from live data.
o They provide the flexibility to combine data from any
enterprise app and the cloud regardless of its location. Users
can build apps and dashboards that can be displayed on the
Web and mobile devices.

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Enterprise Mashups Types

• Customer: provides a quick view of customer

data for a sales person in preparation for a
customer site visit.
• Logistics: displays inventory for a group of
department stores based on specific criteria.
• Human resource: provides a quick glance at
employee data such as profiles, salary, ratings,
benefits status, and activities.

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Benefits of Enterprise Mashups:
Table 11.2 Enterprise Mashups Benefits
Summary of benefits of mashup technology to an enterprise:
• Dramatically reduces time and effort needed to combine disparate data sources.
• Users can define their own data mashups by combining fields from different data
sources that were not previously needed.
• Users can create new dashboards.
• Enables the building of complex queries by non-experts with a drag-and-drop
query building tool.
• Enables agile BI because new data sources can be added to a BI system quickly via
direct links to operational data sources, bypassing the need to load them to a data
warehouse.
• Provides a mechanism to easily customize and share knowledge throughout the
company.

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Enterprise Data Mashups Review
1. Sketch or describe the architecture of an enterprise
mashup application.
2. What is an enterprise data mashup?
3. What are the functions and uses of enterprise
mashups?
4. Explain why business workers may need data mashup
technology.
5. What are three benefits of mashup technology to the
organization?

Copyright ©2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 22

Learning Objectives (3 of 4)
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Digital Dashboards
o A digital dashboard provides in-depth business analysis while
providing a real-time snapshot of productivity. It is an
electronic interface used to acquire and consolidate data
across an organization.
o The digital dashboard emerged in the 1970s from the different
report formats produced by decision support systems.
o As more and more companies moved to the Web some 20
years later, digital dashboard systems were developed to
combine data reporting and facilitate smooth business
operations and decisions.
o When done well, a digital dashboard is a tool that helps an
organization efficiently develop analytical goals and strategies.

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Digital Dashboards
• A style of reporting that depicts KPIs, operational or
strategic information with intuitive and interactive displays.
• Custom programmed to automatically and securely pull,
analyze, and display data from enterprise systems, cloud
apps, data feeds, and external sources and then display the
metrics.
• Components of dashboards are:
o Design
o Performance metrics
o API
o Access

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Digital Dashboards
Components of dashboards are as follows:
o Design The visualization techniques and descriptive captions
to convey information so that they are correctly understood.
Infographics are widely used because they convey information
in interesting and informative designs.
o Performance metrics KPIs and other real-time content
displayed on the dashboard. All dashboard data should reflect
the current value of each metric.

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Digital Dashboards
o APIs connect disparate data sources and feeds to display on
the dashboard. The alternative is for users or IT to manually
enter data to the dashboard. Dashboards created in this
manner tend to fail because of the risk of incomplete,
outdated, or wrong data, which users learn not to trust.
o Access Preferred access is via a secure Web browser from a
mobile device.

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Dashboard Functions
• Dashboard Functions
o Pull data from disparate data sources and feeds,
manipulate the data, and display the metrics.
o Displays performance metrics for company functions
o Eliminates need to log into multiple applications to
view business performance
• Examples of Financial Metrics:
o Net income
o Cash Balance, Aactual vs. Expected
o Profit, current month projection
o Changes in A/R and A/P
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Dashboards are Real Time (1 of 2)
Having real-time, or near-real-time, data is essential to
keep users aware of any meaningful changes in the
metrics as they occur and to provide information for
making decisions in real time.
Dashboards are often mistakenly thought of as reports
consisting of various gauges, charts, and dials, but the
purpose of business dashboards is much more specific
and directed.
The purpose of dashboards is to give users a clear view of
the current state of KPIs, real-time alerts, and other
metrics about operations.
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Dashboards are Real Time (1 of 2)
Dashboard design is a critical factor because business
users need to be able to understand the significance of
the dashboard information at a glance and have the
capability to drill down to one or more levels of detail.
Having real time, or near real time, data is essential to
keep users aware of any meaningful changes in the
metrics as they occur and to provide information for
making decisions in real time.
Users can take corrective actions promptly.

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Dashboards are Real Time (2 of 2)

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Digital Dashboard Benefits
• Visibility: blind spots are minimized or eliminated; Threats
and opportunities are detected as soon as possible.
• Continuous improvement: custom designed to display the
user’s critical metrics and measures.
• Single sign on: save time and effort logging onto numerous
corporate information systems.
• Budget or planning deviations: metrics can be programmed
to display deviations from targets.
• Accountability: employees tend to be motivated to improve
their performance when tracked.

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Digital Dashboards Review
1. Describe business dashboards and their functions.
2. Why do you think dashboards must be in real time and
customized for the executive or manager?
3. How do business dashboards differ from other types of visual
reports?
4. Explain the components of dashboards.
5. What are benefits of dashboards?

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Learning Objectives (4 of 4)
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Geospatial Data and Geographic
Information Systems
• Geographic Information System (GIS)
o Captures, manages, analyzes, and displays multidimensional
geographic data, also called geospatial data.
• Geospatial Data
o Where things or people are and where they are going—with
descriptive data—what things are like or what customers are
doing.

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Geospatial Data and Geographic
Information Systems
• In many cases, locations are already in existing data stores, but
not in a format suitable for analytics.
• A simple process called geocoding can convert postal
addresses to geospatial data that can then be measured and
analyzed.
• By tapping into this resource, decision-makers can use the
geographic or spatial context to detect and respond to
opportunities.

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GIS Business Applications
• Applying GIS in Business GIS tools have made significant
contributions to decision making in finance, accounting,
marketing, and BI.
• Business applications include the following: Analysts
can pinpoint the average income in areas where the
highest performing stores are established.
• Retailers can learn how store sales are impacted by
population or the proximity to competitors’ stores.
• A retail chain with plans to open a hundred new stores
can use GIS to identify relevant demographics,
proximity to highways, public transportation, and
competitors’ stores to select the best location options.
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GIS Business Applications
• Food and consumer products companies can chart
locations of complaint calls, enabling product
traceability in the event of a crisis or recall.
• Sales reps might better target their customer visits by
analyzing the geography of sales targets.
• With current GIS, geospatial, and geocoding
technologies and platforms, GISs can be easily
incorporated and managed within data analytics and
visualization software.

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GIS Business Applications
• With the GIS moving into the cloud, developers of
enterprise applications based on SAP, Microsoft Office,
SharePoint, MicroStrategy, IBM Cognos, and Microsoft
Dynamics CRM are using it to create a wide range of
mobile applications.

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Copyright
Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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from the use of the information contained herein.

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