Mod6

I chose to write about Tableau. I have no experience with it and I’m completely new to visualization software like it. Tableau provides visualizations in the form of graphs, charts, maps, and a host of other options to make it easier to use the data that you’ve collected. Visuals are not just for marketing. They can be used to tell your story and give more meaning to your data. Compelling visuals can improve presentations, reports, marketing, sales meetings … even things like decision making (RTS Labs, 2016).
One use that I can see from a business perspective is actually web content data. I’ve worked with large-scale website content migrations in both the higher ed and government industries. This type of migration can range from several hundred items to several hundred thousand.Of course, keeping track of that kind of information is haphazard at worst and lacking in any sort of easy-to-use visual at best.
Estimates suggest that by better integrating big data, healthcare could save as much as $300 billion a year — that’s equal to reducing costs by $1000 a year for every man, woman, and child (Marr, B., 2016). I can also vouch for the potential cost-savings of such a visualization software for these large-scale content migrations.
Instead of spending weeks writing reports and filling up spreadsheets based on custom software that I had to write just to get the data out of its several locations--I could use Tableau to connect to the data sources directly and have access to a host of visualization/reports. When the final outcome is whether or not this content migration is going to hold up a large project--things like speed and ease-of-use are phenomenally important.
For a more concrete example, I have two databases--the original data and the database we’re migrating to. The code I write converts it from one to the other; however, errors, bad data, software issues, and even platform issues can cause all sorts of problems. With Tableau though, I can connect to both data sources, merge and/or compare what I need to compare and easily deliver a report (with stunning visuals) to our stakeholders and upper management. Currently still a work in progress, but just knowing the capabilities of Tableau has opened doors that I simply didn’t know existed.

References:

Marr, B. (). Big Data: 20 Mind-Boggling Facts Everyone Must Read. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/09/30/big-data-20-mind-boggling-facts-everyone-must-read/#4c1d17017b1e

RTS Labs. (2016). 6 Ways Tableau Can Transform The Way You Do Business. Retrieved from https://hackernoon.com/6-ways-tableau-can-transform-the-way-you-do-business-d44e2ba3e964