Discovering Business Intelligence Using Treemap Visualizations

Alert naturalists scan the forests and the trees, taking in the overview and noticing seasonal changes while being on the lookout for fires. They also are watching for insect invasions that could damage trees, and they consider sites for controlled burns to reinvigorate the forest. Alert naturalists know what to look for and are quick to spot surprises. In a similar manner, alert managers do more than recognize expected patterns in sales cycles, movements in supply chains, or yields in manufacturing. Successful managers are skillful at spotting exceptional events, identifying emerging fashions, and noticing what is missing. When problems develop, they take prompt action to keep plans on schedule. When novel trends emerge, they change plans to take advantage of opportunities. Making confident, correct, and bold decisions is a challenge, especially when the volume and pace of activity are high. Experience and intuition remain important, but generating reasonable alternatives based on accurate information is necessary. The 30-year emergence of computerized databases and data warehouses from internal and external sources provides the business intelligence that is needed to spot trends, notice outliers, and identify gaps. Early relational database systems with SQL queries were a great step forward, and then business intelligence tools provided still easier access for some kinds of data exploration; but these pointand-click interfaces still produced tabular results or static graphics. Software that produces visual displays of search results with interactive exploration has only recently become widely available.