Business Reporting: Chart and Graph

To report on a topic, it is necessary to use charts and graphs. Business reporting in particular often requires charts and graphs to present the data obtained. A chart can include up to four key parts: the basic components of a graph as well as some additional elements, such as a title, axis, image and text. In this blog post we will explain these components and how they are used if they are included in the data set.

As you work on your reports or presentations for business school, here are some helpful tools that will help make their content clearer when presenting them visually: https://www.xchartsio.com/ (works with Power BI).

Business Reporting: Charts and Graphs 1

Business Reporting: Charts and Graphs 2

Business Reporting: Charts and Graphs 3

Business Reporting: Charts and Graphs 4

Brief Introduction to Charting Software

For the purpose of this blog post, we will use the following data in our charts. The data are available from Yahoogroups: https://www.yahoogroups.com/forum/?group=chart-and-graphs . They are available as an excel file for download. The charts are available for download in the same location. The charts are:

Brief Introduction to Charting Software

A chart or graph is a graphical representation of data. Graphs can be shown in either 2D or 3D. Charts and graphs provide an easy way to view certain types of data in a more condensed and visually appealing manner, which makes them useful for compiling, analyzing and communicating data. While it is possible to create charts and graphs using a word processor, many people choose instead to use a piece of software called a charting application. The following article looks at the main features of some popular charting applications, as well as their strengths and weaknesses.

During the course of this article, we will present the following charting applications:  PowerBI, Excel, and R. PowerBI was chosen as it is one of the most widely used software packages for Business Intelligence in business today. The following are examples of two charts using Power BI that were created using Microsoft Office Excel and R. The charts were produced using the following data:  

In Microsoft Excel:

In RStudio Desktop:

Both of these charts are excellent representations of the data collected, but there are a few things to consider when making a decision about which charting application to use. These include the type of results desired, tools available and whether or not there is an option for integration with a traditional BI system. It is important to consider these factors when choosing the right tool.

PowerBI has a range of features that make it an excellent visualization tool. These features include some basic data manipulation techniques, support for geocoding, the ability to add multiple visualizations and reports, and the ability to publish visualizations to the web or as cloud reports.  PowerBI also supports a range of different charting types including 2D column, 2D pie and 2D line charts. It also supports 3D charts. However, PowerBI only supports bar charts at this time and there is no option to change colors independently.

Power BI is also an excellent tool for business intelligence reporting. It integrates with business intelligence tools such as Excel, SQL and Access. The big advantage to using PowerBI is that it provides a centralized dashboard for business reports. This dashboard can be shared and updated by many different people within an organization, which makes it an excellent way to visualize critical information and automatically provide regular updates when new data is collected.

Power BI however is not without its drawbacks. Power BI does not currently support integration with the Microsoft Office suite so Excel, Word and PowerPoint are still exclusively used when working in those applications.  There is also no option to connect to a traditional BI system or any other system like Teradata. This can be a major disadvantage if the organization is not using any BI tools.

Excel is a software package that was designed to allow users to create and manipulate spreadsheets. It was originally released in 1985 by Microsoft as part of their MS Office suite of computer programs. Although it has been around for quite some time, it still remains one of the most widely used programs for data analysis and reporting.

Power BI uses Excel as the back-end for data storage and analysis, which is why it is called a Power BI addin. This makes it an excellent tool for anyone who wants to include business intelligence in their reporting. The integration with Excel means that there are many different features available, including the natural language query tool (NLS).

Power BI also has a lot of support from Microsoft. It comes free with every Office 365 subscription and it can be accessed through the Microsoft Azure website or by creating an account on Office 365 or OneDrive.

There are some drawbacks to using PwerBI with Excel however, mainly that it does not support any advanced visualization techniques. It is also quite limited when compared to programming languages such as R.

R is a programming language that was developed at Bell Labs in the early 1980s. The first version of R was released in 1993, and it has since been developed by IBM and a very large number of other companies in addition to the Bell Labs that initially created it. R has become one of the most widely used programs for data analysis and business intelligence reporting. Support for Power BI is provided by the third party software,  R-PowerBI.  

R-PowerBI supports a range of different charting types including 2D columns and 2D pie charts. It also supports 3D charts. However, there are no options for changing colors independently or exporting as pictures or PDF's. R also offers a variety of other charting types, including radar and polar charts.  R is an excellent option for people who want to perform more advanced data analysis than is possible in Excel. Many different statistical analysis techniques are available in R that are not possible or are much easier to do in Excel or Power BI.  Because of its flexibility, R can be used to create charts that would be quite difficult to accomplish by using Excel or Power BI alone. The following graphic displays some examples of charts that were created using R:

R does have some disadvantages though. It does not have the same level of support for business intelligence reporting as Power BI has. Nor does it have the same level of support for collaboration and data visualization that Power BI has had. This is primarily because there are very few business intelligence applications written using R. To make this a better option, more third-party companies will need to develop BI applications that use R as a back-end.  There are some excellent free tools available, including Tableau Public , but these tools do not have the same level of features or support that PowerBI has.

Conclusion: When choosing between Power BI and R for business intelligence reporting, it is important to take into account the capabilities of each tool. PowerBI has a large number of features that make it an excellent choice for collaboration and data visualization. Excel is a useful tool for those who want to use R to create more complex charts and graphs. Both tools will require some basic programming skills. Power BI requires the ability to write some code in Microsoft Visual Basic, which is simple enough for most people who have had any sort of coding experience.  R requires some knowledge of programming languages like C++ (even if you are using free packages like RStudio).