How Pivot Tables are Important in Data-Driven Decisions

Volodymyr Yatsevsky posted on April 20th, 2012

Analysis tools are essential part of enterprise software as they become more and more effective in day-to-day decision making. As most companies operate big data amounts today, it is obvious that it becomes difficult to do all the data retrieval, management and analysis, or the ETL cycle. If implemented properly, the data-driven decision making can increase overall company performance from 5% and up!

Big Data is sprouting today across every company life. Web traffic, social marketing activities, as well as KPI like shipments, sales and customer care – all of these are data that are coming into the company, but require quick and efficient tools for decision making. The data becomes the main driver of the company as it becomes as important asset as personnel or money.

Courtesy of alaporte.net

Why putting raw data into Pivot Table in contrary to traditional Excel data tables or data grids, which become overcrowded in today’s Big Data era? The following are three key reasons for doing this:

• Pivot table is compact and more readable format of plain table data;
• Pivot table helps key person to see trends, relationships, as well as coming opportunities and threads on their way of gathering data for right business decision;
• Pivot table gives a new approach towards data navigation allowing user to slice data in a fast and efficient way, rather than endless manipulation with filtering tools.

Certainly, there are other more sophisticated tools for predictive or statistical analysis as well as professional software. Yet pivot table is simple enough for managers, who rely on it as on common instrument for birds view on daily situation in a company. Pivot Tables might not solve all the problems and will not be a panacea in any case, but will empower the data-driven decision support as well as increase overall visibility of KPIs inside the company.