Data is a crucial for businesses – but under estimating the importance of visualisation will turn it essentially into useless information.

Across all fields, industries and markets, businesses use big data to keep a finger on the pulse of the market and make their biggest decisions as they move forward in their respective industry.

Big data provides a major competitive edge to those seeking to rise to the top of their field, an unprecedented level of insight to those seeking to improve operations or make major marketing moves, and gives investors an intuitive sense as to what they can expect in the coming months across all markets.

But without a team of data analysts to turn data from a sea of numbers and facts into something consumable — data is really just a lot of noise.

To be clear, it’s incredibly valuable noise. But once a team of experts has done the research, gathered the raw data and identified what’s most relevant and important, it’s crucial that that information can then be filtered, translated and presented in a way that people can understand.

Data visualisation is the tower of Babel among all professionals within an organisation

 The best use of data is one that anyone working on a project, within an organisation or toward the same goal can understand just as well as the professional sitting next to them.

So the best way to present data analysis to a group in such a way that the information is streamlined and everyone gets and stays on the same page is through visualisation.

What that means is simple, and something you’ve seen myriad times: charts, graphs, slides, you name it. If you can boil the information down to something that everyone can simply and quickly understand, then the value of your data analysis has just increased exponentially.

It may seem like an unnecessary final step, but really, humans are visual learners. We retain information and gain understanding most completely and quickly when information is presented in a visual format. Consider: which are you more likely to respond to well and to retain. A simple pie graph or a full-length page of text?

Visual information cuts down on the noise, helps to reduce superfluous information and presents the most important insights in the most universally accessible format.

After the challenge of gathering and translating big data, in order to prevent that resource going to waste by presenting it in a way that no one can (or cares to) understand, the best way to make good use of the information, resources and analysis available is to visualise it in a way that everyone can respond to, and use to drive the business forward on the basis of streamlined understanding.