Why a modern data hub is crucial for visualization and other analytic tools
There’s a lot of interest in data visualization tools right now; and rightfully so. These products make it very easy for business analysts and others to create eye-catching dashboards that highlight key business performance information. However, the amount of work required by users to prepare and maintain the underlying data can be quite overwhelming.
Visualization and other BI tools need to possess functionality for data collection, transformation, maintenance and advanced analytics to ensure that core business information can be easily exploited by those who need it.
Today’s enterprise needs a modern data platform (or hub) that can collect all types of data flexibly and make that data instantly available for analysis. There are many reasons why you would want to use a modern data hub when analyzing and visualizing your data. Here are some of them:
- While information from ERP and other transactional systems can be accessed with today’s visualization and reporting toolsets, the data structures of these systems are quite complex. As a result, users either have a difficult time getting to the data they need or understanding what they’re looking at once they have it. Plus, not all of the data that analysts need resides solely in transactional applications. This includes plans, budgets, forecasts and other information that your employees, suppliers, customers and other third parties may provide. Even web- and cloud-based data like demographic information.
- In addition, using a modern data hub together with visualization tools and other analytic / reporting solutions eliminates the potential risk of misusing or misinterpreting transactional system data. It also mitigates performance problems that may arise when reports are run directly against operational systems or when the tools are used to drill down to very low levels of detail within a large set of data.
- A modern data hub supports the integration and management of data derived from many different sources, regardless of whether the sources are internal or external to your business. With a modern data platform, high volumes of historical and near real-time data can reside in one easily accessible place with a common data model that communicates how all the data is connected to each other, processed and stored.