Dashboards and Data Visualization
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Table of Contents
Introduction Context Visuals Focusing
Attention
Design 3 Dashboards Conclusion
Principles
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CFI Instructors
We stand out from the competition because our teachers are professional educators.
Tim Vipond Justin Sanders Scott Powell
CEO & Instructor Instructor Director & Instructor
Vancouver London Vancouver
Lisa Dorian Ryan Spendelow
Director & Instructor Instructor
New York Hong Kong
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Objectives
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Session objectives
Harness the power of Understand your audience Design clear and effective,
visual communication and the context charts, graphs & images
Focus your audience’s Apply best practices for
attention on the most design principles Tell the story you want to tell
important points
Build persuasive Design insightful Become a world class
presentations dashboards financial analyst
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Data Visualization Overview
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What is storytelling with data?
Numbers Language
STORY
Numbers and language combine
to create storytelling with data
We typically work on numbers
and language separately
This course teaches you to combine
the two for effective business communication
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Why focus on visuals?
Majority of the population are “visual learners”
Our brains see words as pictures, not individual letters
Very hard to read financial analysis in
numbers and tables
Charts bring the data to life
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The potential impact is huge
Executive Decision Making
Executives need to make decisions quickly
Good analysts distill large amounts of complex
information into a simple, concise output
Enhanced decision making can lead to significant
value creation at most companies
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Bad charts are everywhere
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Great visuals make such a difference
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Great visuals make such a difference
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Context
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Session objectives
Know who your Determine what action you Decide how to get them
audience is want them to take to take that action
Know what questions Identify the “big idea” Create a high level
to ask storyboard
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Know your audience
Audience
Internal External
Executives Company-wide Clients Public
Update Win Business
Decision Project Update
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Know your audience
Audience
Live Distributed
(Presented) (Email/Print)
Non-Experts Experts Non-Experts Experts
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Know your audience
Audience
Internal External
Live Distributed
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Tailor your message
Considerations
Use of jargon /
technical
Level of detail Tone
information /
Acronyms
Inform, or What biases does Quantitative vs
persuade? the audience have? qualitative data
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The main idea
“ “Despite significant growth in our company’s top line and
improving EBITDA margins, we require a significant capital
investment next year or we will run out of money.”
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Storyboarding
ISSUE: DEMONSTRATE DEMONSTRATE IDEAS: COMPARISON: RECOMMENDATION:
ISSUE: ISSUE:
Despite growth Positives: Graphs Negatives: Raise equity, raise Show various The optional
and better of revenue, customer metrics, debt, dramatically outcomes, before choice is to raise
margins, we need margins, capital cut capital and after etc. $x of equity
to raise money investment, cash spending
burn, etc.
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Visuals
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Session objectives
Review the various Match visuals to the Know when to use
visual options situation what type of visual
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Text
+75%
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Table
Revenue Growth
0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0%
- 19.22 23.73 29.09 35.43 42.88
Exit
7.0x 20.85 25.92 31.97 39.13 47.56
Multiple
8.0x 22.47 28.11 34.85 42.83 52.24
9.0x 24.10 30.31 37.72 46.53 56.92
10.0x 25.73 32.50 40.60 50.23 61.60
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Heatmap
Revenue Growth
0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0%
- 19.22 23.73 29.09 35.43 42.88
Exit
7.0x 20.85 25.92 31.97 39.13 47.56
Multiple
8.0x 22.47 28.11 34.85 42.83 52.24
9.0x 24.10 30.31 37.72 46.53 56.92
10.0x 25.73 32.50 40.60 50.23 61.60
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Line chart
7,000,000
6,000,000
5,000,000
4,000,000
3,000,000
2,000,000
1,000,000
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Scatterplot
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
0
50 100 150 200 250 300
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Column
6,142,426
5,157,469 5,162,564
4,421,729
3,995,126
1,135,541
38,943
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Bar
0 1,000,000 2,000,000 3,000,000 4,000,000 5,000,000 6,000,000 7,000,000
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Column
6,142,426
5,157,469 5,162,564
4,421,729
3,995,126
1,135,541
38,943
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Column and line
7,000,000 70%
6,000,000 60%
5,000,000 50%
4,000,000 40%
3,000,000 30%
2,000,000 20%
1,000,000 10%
0 0%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Stacked column
10,000,000
9,000,000
8,000,000
7,000,000
6,000,000
5,000,000
4,000,000
3,000,000
2,000,000
1,000,000
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Stacked bar
0 1,000,000 2,000,000 3,000,000 4,000,000 5,000,000 6,000,000 7,000,000 8,000,000 9,000,000 10,000,000
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Waterfall
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Tornado
(60) (40) (20) 0 20 40 60
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Gauge
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Bullet
74.0%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
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What not to do…
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What not to do…
7,000,000.00
6,000,000.00 6,142,426
5,000,000.00 5,157,469 5,162,564
4,421,729
4,000,000.00 3,995,126
3,000,000.00 Series1
2,000,000.00
1,000,000.00 1,135,541
0.00 38,943
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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What not to do…
7,000,000
6,000,000
5,000,000
4,000,000
3,000,000
2,000,000
1,000,000
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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What not to do…
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
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What not to do…
0
1,000,000
2,000,000
3,000,000
4,000,000
5,000,000
6,000,000
7,000,000
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Visual Exercise
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In Excel, make at least 6 changes to improve this graph
Sold versus Shipped
160
140
120
100
80
60
Sold Shipped
40
20
0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
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Solution
Sold versus Shipped
150
Sold
125
Shipped
100
75
50
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
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Focusing Attention
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Session objectives
Understand why pre- Learn what each Learn how to incorporate
attentive attributes matter of the attributes are them in charts
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Pre-attentive attributes
A pre-attentive attribute is processed by the brain BEFORE it
enters our consciousness or memory
It’s a survival instinct to highlight changes in our environment
Consists of color, form, movement and positioning
Can be easily incorporated into charts
Dramatically improves the effectiveness by focusing
attention where we want it
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Examples of pre-attentive attributes
Orientation Shape Length
Width Color Enclosure
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Incorporating the attributes with charts
Jan
Jan
Feb
Feb
Mar
Mar
Apr
Apr
May
May
Jun
Jun
Jul
Jul 40
Aug
Aug
Sep
Sep
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
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Incorporating the attributes with charts
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Incorporating the attributes with charts
45 45
40 40
35 35
30 30
25 25
20 20
15 15
Target
10 10
5 5
0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
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Incorporating the attributes with charts
45 45
Series1 Series2
40 40
35 35
Comment
30 30
25 25
20 20
15 15
10 10
5 5
0 0
Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
Series1 Series2
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Incorporating the attributes with charts
45 70
40
60
Threshold
35
50
30
25 40
Series 1
20 30
15
20
10
10 Series 2
5
0 0
Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
Series1 Series2
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Focusing Attention Exercise
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In Excel, make at least 6 changes to improve this graph
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Solution
Actual vs Budget
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
Actual Budget
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Design Principles
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Session objectives
Use guides to make Make the information The importance
messages intuitive accessible to all of aesthetics
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Guides
A guide indicates to someone how
something should be used
Use can use guides to clearly illustrate information in charts
Highlight important information
Eliminate distractions
Isolate the key message
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Guides
70
60
Over Budget
50
Budget
40
30
Series 1
20
10
Series 2
0
Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
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Accessibility
Anyone from any background can understand the information
Keep it clean
Use common language
Remove complexity
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Accessibility
In July we saw a significant
increase in order volume, which
lead to higher-than-expected
Jan revenue
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul 40
Aug
Sep
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
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Aesthetics
Not only are beautiful charts more pleasing to look at,
they are more likely to be accepted as “true”
Be careful with color
Alignment is critical
Use white space intelligently
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Aesthetics
100%
90%
80%
70%
23%
60%
37%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Series1 Series2 Series3 Series4 Series5 Series6 Series7 Series8
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Dashboards
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Session objectives
Why use dashboards Executive decision making
3 Step by Step
How to build a dashboard
Examples
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Why use dashboards
Quickly digest a large amount of information
Evaluate historical performance
Illustrate a forecasts and scenarios
Output the details of a financial model
Regular company updates
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Executive decision making
© Corporate Finance Institute
My time is extremely limited DASHBOARD TEMPLATE
2018 Net Earnings Waterfall ($000s)
What are the key takeaways?
What should I be worried about?
What should we change?
Cash Flow and Cash Balance ($000s) 2018 Productivity Rate
What is going well? $200
Cash from Operations
Cash from Investing
Cash from Financing Business 1 74.0%
$150
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
$100
What should we do more of? $50
$-
Business 2 87.0%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
$(50)
$(100) Business 3 79.0%
$(150)
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
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How to build a dashboard
Planning Designing
What metrics are most important for this business? Size and orientation
What time periods are most relevant? Charts versus tables, versus text
Who is going to read this? Design principles
What decisions will they make from it? Corporate style guide
Multiple iterations… lots of tinkering
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How to build a dashboard
SWITCH TO EXCEL RECORDING
LIVE DEMONSTRATION
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Conclusion
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Session objectives
Harness the power of Understand your audience Design clear and effective,
visual communication and the context charts, graphs & images
Focus your audience’s Apply best practices for
attention on the most design principles Tell the story you want to tell
important points
Build persuasive Design insightful Become a world class
presentations dashboards financial analyst
corporatefinanceinstitute.com
Advance your
career
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