Visualize This

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Business Intelligence

Visualize This

5/1/2008

By Graham Tracey

Before that story can be told, understand that with the use of any new tools or features, there are two challenges inherent: First are the everyday associated issues of presentation, collaboration, and sharing. We've all heard the horror stories about spending hours cutting and pasting figures into Microsoft Excel, and linking the resulting chart to PowerPoint just to create a basic “numbers” visualization. Then there's the challenge of deciding how best to present the data. Which approach will get you closer to the “beautiful evidence” espoused by data visualization guru Edward Tufte?

Dynamic Visualization Options for External Audiences

Increasingly, institutions have found that they must share information with audiences outside of the campus administration. In an effort to be transparent to prospective students, parents, and the community at large, institutions have begun to publish facts and sometimes detailed statistics about institutional outcomes. Most of the time, these “accountability” websites are dotted with Adobe Acrobat PDF documents containing text and a few simple charts. Sometimes the sites contain static HTML pages with graphics that have been lifted from a BI software program and pasted into the page. Either way, production of these pages involves many steps. But wouldn't it be great if your charts and graphs on the web were updated automatically at the end of each academic term, when the data are refreshed?

Google Chart API. If you are willing to put your trust in one of the most ubiquitous names on the web, check out the recently released Google application programming interface (API) designed for presenting charts and graphs on any web page. The new service allows developers and technically inclined administrators, using a well-documented set of parameters, to pass a data set to a web service hosted on Google's servers. The result: a number of chart or graph types available for use, ready to be embedded on a website of your choosing.

Why not simply use the web-based portals provided by any one of the major BI vendors (such as Business Objects, Cognos, or SAS), to display such information to the public? Unfortunately, most vendors employ “per user” licensing models that make such a solution cost-prohibitive for most institutions. But a service such as the Google Chart API gets around this costly limitation and can help you unlock specific information for eyes beyond the campus gate.

Low-cost software. If the idea of a hosted service does not appeal to you, there are low-cost software options available to help you present appealing web visualizations to broader audiences. Take a look at amCharts: For $425, you get an enterprise license to produce simple, yet truly impressive dynamic charts and graphs. With a tool like amCharts you can, for example, provide a real-time, self-updating graph to institutional alumni and friends, depicting progress toward a particular fundraising goal. Since the graph is dynamically updated on a regular basis, it can even demonstrate momentum and encourage more participation from active donors.