Using Sheets as a Business Intelligence platform

1. Sheets as a Business Intelligence platform

G'day! I'm Raina, welcome to this course on data visualization with spreadsheets! Data visualization has become the number one way to showcase analyzed data. Rather than looking at a huge amount of data analyzed in a spreadsheet, it is much easier for an audience to understand a visual representation of the data. This visual representation is called a dashboard.

2. Why use Google Sheets?

So why use spreadsheets? Most computer users have had at least some dealings with spreadsheets, those in the corporate and commercial environment more so. Because of its familiarity, flexibility, and the tools available to analyze data, spreadsheets are the most widely used Business Intelligence, or BI, tool in the world. In a nutshell, BI is the strategies, methods, and technologies that a business uses to produce meaningful information, that can be used to enhance decision making. It's about providing a complete picture through analyzing and combining data.

3. How does Business Intelligence help us?

BI helps in strategic decision making, measuring goals, increasing operational efficiency, optimizing business processes, and pinpointing business opportunities, through identifying problems, market trends, and new markets. So, what specific data will help you make informed decisions? It could include sales, profits, target customers, market opportunities, competitors, costs, and more. A dashboard is the perfect tool to display data in a visual way. It is an information management tool that will track and present your analyzed data according to criteria you have specified.

4. What message are you trying to convey?

Now that you know what Business Intelligence and data visualization are, you can look at creating a basic dashboard. Before you begin though, think about what information you need. What information are you trying to get across? Who is your audience? Are they viewing the information on a big screen, a desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone? What visualization best displays your data?

5. What else matters?

And what else matters? Do you need a logo? Will you show different scenarios? What about company colors? Will your audience print in color or view on-screen? What about 3D objects? Sometimes these can just confuse the message. Consider how much detail you want. The detail shown should only be the data you need. What charts do you want? Your charts are visual and should grab your reader's attention, so it is vital that you select the right chart for the right job. In this course, you will dabble with data visualization, and eventually create your own working dashboard that will showcase statistics relating to shark attacks in Australia.

6. What functions does a dashboard use?

The dashboard you are going to create has features similar to the ones shown on the slide. Once your dashboard has been set up, features can be built into it to enable a user to see their desired results, either within the cells or on a chart. The finished dashboard can include features like data validation to select values from a list, VLOOKUP formulas to return data from a specified column, formulas of reference to pull in data from a dataset, and conditional formatting to highlight cells according to criteria.

7. Different types of charts

One of the main assets of spreadsheets is their ability to produce charts to plot statistical data. Column and line charts are used for comparison, histograms plot frequency, candlesticks show price movements, scatters show relationships, and sparkline charts show single trends within a cell. We will look at all of these chart types in this course.

8. Let's practice!

But first, let's practice modifying a simple completed dashboard to understand how they work and the features used to create them.

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