Bridging the Dashboard Communication Gap

The term “dashboard” provides a convenient metaphor because everyone has at least some idea of what a dashboard looks like – and therein lies the problem: our own idea of a dashboard may differ wildly from someone else’s idea of a dashboard.  When people talk about dashboards, there may be a huge communications gap and […]

How Three Graphs Can Tell Us Where to Focus our Attention

A while back, SEO guru Glenn Crocker and I were talking about how visual analytics can help with search engine optimization.   Getting useful SEO information usually requires crunching data for thousands of links, so it’s quite useful to have something that takes us from a quick overview to the interesting details.

To illustrate how visual analytics […]

Decision Making During Turmoil: How Well Are We Prepared?

In order to make profitable decisions, we need good information.  Whether we base our decisions on sales, customer perceptions or the number of widgets we shipped last month, our information comes from some system that collects and measures relevant data for us.

In my Six Sigma Black Belt class we recently discussed the challenges of developing […]

Understanding Customer Feedback: How Visualizations Quickly Guide Us to Useful Conclusions

Have you ever had the “pleasure” of slogging through hundreds of feedback forms from a seminar or conference?  Have you ever noticed how the mind seems to dwell on the negative comments, maybe even to the point that all the positives seem to loose their luster?  That’s when crunching actual survey numbers can help put […]

Data Modeling: Patient Centric vs. Unit Centric

Sometimes counting pills just isn’t enough.  When developing forecasts or trying to track product performance one has to consider how a drug is being used and look beyond the mere number of pills or vials on the market.

A good starting point includes looking at standard courses of therapy, average daily dose and similar proxies.   A […]

Looking Ahead: More Data, More Details – Less Work?

As companies grow, so do the demands on their Sales Operations and Marketing Research teams.  As new products are launched and sales forces grow, BI managers need to answer ever more questions from ever more people about ever more data and ever more details.  The “working smarter” solution to deal with this increasing demand usually […]

Making Time For The Future

Time acts like money: we have to invest a little up front to get much more of it down the road.  The initial time investment involves paper, pencil and some brainstorming.  We build on this investment with a little bit of research and use the research results to start building a case for stopping things […]

Three Steps To A Better BI Future

Managers who provide information to their sales and marketing organizations walk a tight line between drowning in data details and making sure that the information they provide leads to profitable decisions.  The daily fire fights do not leave much time for planning ahead, let alone for envisioning the future.  Yet, all successful managers know that […]

Multiple Indication Muddle

Pharmaceutical drugs often treat multiple health conditions, and sometimes the dosage varies considerably depending on the patient or the condition being treated. Under these circumstances it becomes necessary to look at how a drug and its competitors are used in real life before one can adequately compare their performance in the market place.

Likewise, comparing products […]