Business Storytelling out of Data Analytics

4th December 2024

a. Converting data insights into business storytelling

i. Drawing insights from data is a technical task using business intelligence and data science. But a data story brings these insights together with qualitative analysis and domain expertise to better understand a relevant business goal or objective.

ii. A data story is a narrative constructed around a set of data that puts it into context and frames the broader implications.

iii. Through data storytelling, complicated information is simplified so that your audience can engage with your content and make critical decisions quicker and more confidently.

iv. Data storytelling or for that matter business storytelling is the skill to craft the narrative by leveraging data, contextualizing them, and finally presenting them to the target audience. It utilizes not only data analysis and statistics, but also data visualization, qualitative and contextual analysis, and presentation

v. Data storytelling is, thus, very similar to human storytelling but provides the added benefits of deeper insights and supporting evidence through graphs and charts.

b. Structure the story that data will convey

i. Sort out the data from which insights can be drawn - Story need to be unearthed from data insights. So before constructing a data story, you must first determine what the data is actually telling you from the insights that are generated.

ii. Consider your audience - Target audience matters, like any story written. So the next step is to determine who the story will be conveyed to and what their backgrounds are. For example, an executive team will likely be more interested in understanding the broader business implications, while a data science team will be more focused on the statistical dimensions within the business

iii. Determine what data matters - Modern businesses collect so much information that determining which datasets are most relevant to the broader narrative can be challenging. It’s common to get overwhelmed with data when constructing a data story. What matters to you as an analyst may not be concerning to business front line leaders. For example, if you’re planning on telling a story about customer experience of a set of products, then product usage data, sales trend, and customer feedback and even social media analytics may all be relevant, but sales team experience data may not be. So, it’s important to start by identifying the data that can inform the topics you’ll want to explore instead of looking at all the possible data available.

iv. Analyse data and find insights - Getting involved into data analytics will come next. With the most relevant data identified, perform data analysis using applicable tools to draw insights that create meaning out of the data. When the objective for getting the story is clear and the audience is set, it may not be surprising to draw correlation between some key datasets that were otherwise not in focus, or there was a spike or dip in some activities around a certain time which were not attended to or analysing certain trends that may significantly trigger story etc. Digging into these relationships and patterns can help to provide the general themes of the data story. So right kind of data set and analytic tools will be the key.

v. Provide context - All engaging stories evolve when context is set matching the end objectives. Data on its own is not enough to create an optimal data story. The domain expertise around the topic is essential to crafting the right narrative, and making it understandable to the audience. Therefore, it’s critical to weave context and data insights together. This doesn’t just mean providing an overview at the beginning before diving into data visualizations. It means framing the data insights with the business reality and any other relevant information that your audience may not otherwise be familiar with throughout the entire story.

vi. Structure the story - Telling a traditional story often includes providing an introduction, a rising action that builds tension through problems, a climax that provides a crucial moment or insight, a falling action that resolves the problems, and a final resolution and retrospection. Business storytelling out of data will require similar lay out.

c. Use Data Visualisation Tools that can make storytelling

i. Three key elements of data storytelling - (a) Build your narrative, (b) Use visuals to enlighten, (c) Show data to support

ii. Good data storytelling means analyzing all the raw data you’ve gathered to confirm a hypothesis and, using analytics to trigger your data story pointers based on context and structure set for the story.

iii. Use data visualisation tools and techniques to present - Data visualization helps transform boundless amounts of data into something simpler and digestible. Here, you can supply the visuals needed to support your story.

iv. Presenting visuals through dashboard

• Use right narratives that matter to the target audience and related to business goals set for the story.
• Make sure that all such narratives are backed by the contexts set, hypothesis tested through data, insights that were drawn from data.
• Quality of data set used and analytics used to drawn insights may come as a question when the story impact is reviewed when the story is presented. Make sure that you have reference to all these.
• Be sure that the story summary is made to evolve in such a manner that facilitates making business decisions aligned to key business objectives that the entire analytics is focused on.

Ultimately, Storytelling is a transition from analytics inferences to story inferences to enable making business leaders talking key business decisions and when rightly done - is a journey worth traversing.

Given below some sample visualisation dashboard taken from Microsoft website that by itself tells a compelling story and when narratives are added, these may lead to a very emphatic business story. This is how journey from data analytics to drawing data insights leads to visualisation driven business storytelling.

 

If you tend to emerge as a Data Analytics professional, you need to know not only how to draw insights from data but also how to present such that data tells a business story. Such kinds of Data Analytics will facilitate business strategy and decisions. Improve your Analytics Skill such that businesses get data stories hidden in the insights from data to make better decisions, improve operations, and stay competitive.

Join the course on Data Analytics and Data Visualisation Using AI, offered by Neotia Skill Development Academy, in collaboration with Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira, Belur Math. This NASSCOM approved course will get you honed with such skills to draw insights from data and develop compelling business story using visualisation techniques. Get groomed as a data analytics professional that serve stakeholder interest.

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