Data Visualizations
Data warehouses provides us a logical view of the
data from relational databases in a more generalized, consolidated, and
multidimensional view. They model
focuses more on providing easier access to data and arriving at better insights
about the business to make improved decisions. There is no specific way of
modeling a data warehouse for a given business case. There will/could be many
different models of data warehouse for same business but with different
perspective. The best way is identify the one that suits the client
requirement/needs the best. To explain in a better way let us take a closer
look at different modeling for different business vignettes. We will be looking
at the following businesses: Retail, Telecommunications and Airline Transportation.
1. Healthcare:
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| Fig1: Main Dashboard with customizable metrics shown |
Healthcare
is a large industry with several loosely coupled operations with numerous
physicians, patients, specialists and the management across time and location. The
management keeps track of all the hospital level hierarchical activities from equipment
supply and maintenance to the performance and tracing across various
departments. One of the best ways to visualize the data and metrics is shown in Fig1. The
dashboard shows more comprehensive information on the census information for
the hospital, patient cycle times, currently waiting and occupied physicians,
overall staffing and even details on the usage/availability
of patient rooms. Each of the data is shown with its average turnaround metric
which provides a quick idea of the stance of the hospital. This dashboard could
also allow you to add extra metrics/data thereby providing customizable dashboard
options. The above data is concerning hospital management.
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| Fig2: Drill-down Dashboard for each department workflow level |
Drill
down options should be provided with the dashboard in order to efficiently
manage the workflow in department. As a sample, we can see the patient workflow
in a specific department in the image in Fig 2. Complete visualization is through
pie chart, line chart, bar graphs. Information like cycle time for a patient
visit in this department, time spend over different procedures, service distribution over time are some of the important graphs shown which provides
immense depth of details on performance of a department/physicians.
2. Telecommunication:
 |
| Fig3: Dashboard for Telecom industry operations |
Telecommunication
business encompasses a number of business operations like installing the
hardware, setting up the network, service activation and upgrades, generating
bills, receive payments and repair work orders. From the business perspective,
the some important insights required could customer churn rate, customer
addition by region by date, successful customer support, successful service
plans and upgrades, total installation costs by region by date etc.
The
best way to visualize telecommunication data is have divide the processes separately
and design a graphical view describing each operation. A sample reference
visualization is shown in the figure below. The financial indicators are
grouped together and shown as line charts like: Total customers by date,
financial growth over time, etc. Line charts could also be used to see the
performance of the service plans offered and overall performance with
competitors. Bar graphs providing information on customer satisfaction with
respect to each service provided and plan upgrades happening over time.
Drill down options could be
provided here too to see region wise new customer growth, region wise new
service contracts signed and service plan distribution details. A consolidated
table showing the current state of the company with revenue, average return per
user, overall growth rate could all give better insights into the data.
3. Transportation- Airline:
The
Airline business keeps track of several data like the flight details, passenger
information, payment processing, miles traveled, cost incurred for maintenance,
flight construction/purchase, fueling costs etc. One of the striking ways
represent data in this type of business is through bar charts and line charts. Performance
lag could be shown by making two graphs for every metric, target and actual.
Individually divided sections clearly showing overall performance/growth, fuel
and other costs incurred, customer data, revenue information segment and flight
information section will be very useful. Customer section showing line charts
for customer satisfaction level, customer booking medium, customer base growth
and average mileage points claimed statistics give detailed insights on the
market reach and stand of the company.
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| Fig4: Dashboard for Flight operations |
While the financial section shows
revenue, profit margin and market stand among competitors line charts, the
flight section could show information about delays by airport, flight cancels
by airport, miles flown with passenger load bar charts. There could be an
overall performance section which shows information related to top satisfied
flights, routes having the most issues, rating the reasons for disruption of
flight and destination with maximum profits as bar charts/pie charts. These
would provide the company an overall view to make predictions and business decisions
like increased flight number on a particular route, improve customer support, change
contract with airports, etc. which will have great positive effects on business
revenue.
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