Infographics: the future of business intelligence

You've no doubt heard the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words" — it speaks about the power of the visual and the way in which images can convey huge amounts of meaning in seconds. In an age of Big Data, that kind of statistical storytelling is more important than ever before, which is why the use of infographics can be so valuable.

Most of us have probably come across many terrible infographics as well as many compelling ones, but done right they can bridge the gap between a batch of raw figures and the ultimate message they present — which enables a previously unimaginable level of data-driven decision making. Infographics are much more than simply pretty pictures for the TL;DR crowd.

The skill required to produce insightful infographics is commensurate to their importance to a
business. Finding someone who can create visual magic from data sets and convey actionable insights to decision makers is no easy task — it requires someone fluent in both number-crunching and picture-painting. Take David McCandless, for example, recently profiled by the BBC and a master of the art.

Collecting data isn't so much of a problem any more, but interpreting it is, and when you see work by someone like McCandless you can see the power of the infographic for all kinds of scenarios. The visual charting of data can even save lives, and has been doing so since 1854 — something to bear in mind the next time you think about infographics as optional extras with little substance to them.

As we know from a recent roundtable attended by Daniel, turning big data into meaningful messages is something many businesses struggle with. As the digital world becomes more data-driven, reducing the signal-to-noise ratio becomes more crucial, and infographics have a significant role to play — consider the Guardian Data Blog, one of the sites leading the way, and the way in which it makes the complicated simple.

If we're agreed on the value of infographics as ways to easily digest complex sets of information, then what's the next step? Recent estimates suggest companies utilise just 12 percent of the data they have, and there are tools that can help change that. Venngage and Infogram, for example, both offer simple but powerful software tools for building customised infographics for your business. Tableau takes a more data and analytics-driven approach but is also a useful resource. Then there's Piktochart, not the most advanced solution but one of the most accessible.

We hope you'll be inspired to embrace infographics and adapt them for your own business. If you're not sure where to start and you need some help, we're only a phone call away.