Want to catch someone''s attention this time of year? Are you kidding? Even the topless gals on the balconies of Bourbon Street in New Orleans are feeling a little miffed and ignored. Everyone''s too busy to pay attention to anything. While the problem is particularly pronounced right around now, in reality, we know it''s always crunch time on the Web. Quarters are too short and a fiscal quarter has scarcely begun before everyone is scurrying to meet the revenue forecast that now looks to be in peril. There are, of course, two ways of working: efficiently and effectively. Efficiently is the manner in which fast-food employees work. Working effectively takes a bit more creativity, a need to slow down and digest information before acting, and of course, the information to digest. Executives, above everyone else, should work effectively. In order to digest information, one needs information in a format that can be understood.
I frequently interview executives, usually with a PowerPoint presentation about their company or product in front of me. It never fails that I want to know more about the data behind the third slice in the pie chart on slide four. Of course, that information, if it exists at all, is presented on slide 17. I can''t absorb the information the way that I want; I have to absorb it the way the vendor presents it. No wonder I lose interest and no wonder the executives also lose interest when they''re presented with internal company reports that doesn''t allow them to dig in the way they desire.
The other day I saw a product that nearly knocked me off my chair. It permitted me to look at a pie chart, with rollovers for each slice showing the data. That''s not a particularly big deal, but when I clicked on a slice, I was really impressed. I was presented with a bar chart that contained the data from the broken out slice. Finally, each bar in the chart was a link to the data that went into that bar.
Take a look at this chart showing data for a fictional company and click around for more in-depth information.
Data is inherently unsexy, which is why the balconies on Bourbon Street don''t have data, but data is exactly what executives and others need to work effectively. Most companies have more information than they know what to do with, but those who need the data usually don''t have the tools to access it, digest it or format it into useful reports.
Using a tool such as Corda''s PopChart will allow you to make your internal data (see ''Tis the Season to Have Data) compelling to those who need to make decisions based on that data. It will also allow customers and visitors to understand data better, as E*Trade and FoxSports.com have figured out.
PopChart has a GUI tool for creating the templates. There''s a server component that can run on you own servers, for internal reporting, or on theirs, for Internet applications. PopChart interfaces with all web application servers to retrieve data from your database. Whichever way you slice it, PopChart delivers the data you need in the way you want to see it, and that gets my attention any time of year.
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