Virtual Reality: The Next Step for Business Intelligence
Everything is being virtual realit-ified – from product development through to buying clothes. And it’s now being seen as the next step for Business Intelligence and Data Analytics.
Even simple data visualisation tools are now enabling businesses to make sense of their data – which often runs to thousands of lines of spreadsheet data. It’s impossible to get a handle on trends and patterns when data is represented in rows, and too big to fit on one screen.
But when turned into graphical representations where trends can be understood in seconds and insights gained in moments, the value of data visualisation becomes clear.
So taking that to the next level and creating a more ‘immersive’ experience is the natural next step.
Plans are underway within data analytics organisations to create applications that enable Data Scientists to literally step inside their data. They will be able to see the data represented visually in 3D; they can walk around it, stand under it, move it and see it from lots of different angles to better understand what is happening. They can layer over other data points – over and over to see correlations between information; which is usually limited in a 2D data visualisation tool where it soon gets messy and complex to understand once multiple different data points are overlaid.
Product development departments are already starting to look at how virtual reality can be integrated into their own data workflows, to reduce time spent developing and be able to interact with physical products without the cost or time of developing models first to spot errors. This offers a great saving opportunity, but also the possibility to explore many ‘what-if’ scenarios that might be too costly to explore with physical products.
As many businesses now employ Data Scientists, it doesn’t make sense to use the same old tools to do different jobs. Virtual Reality will provide a new way of visualising and engaging with data.
