Visualization is the graphical presentation of information to provide a qualitative insight of data to the users. It helps to unlock hidden insights in data and offers businesses a competitive advantage. Visualization is used to explore and analyze large datasets in collaboration with different business analytical models for easy interpretation and prediction.

Given the amount of data generated every minute, visualization is one of the frequently used analytical tools to make informed predictions. In order to create data visualizations, an organization can either hire a data visualization specialist/agency or use data visualization tools. However, you will still have to do a bit of groundwork to feed the right data in these tools to get the perfect visualization you have in mind. Let's have a look at some of the best visualization tools that give life to numbers.

Tableau
Tableau is easy to use drag and drop visual tool. It can be connected to remote and local data in many formats. It comes in online, desktop and server version. It is one of the fastest evolving data visualization tools. One can build amazing data stories in Tableau dashboards. Tableau Public and Tableau Reader are free while Tableau Server and Tableau Desktop come with a 14 days trial offer. The online and server versions allow your team to work collaboratively.

MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop
MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop is a free user-friendly visual analytics tool. The best thing about using this tool is that it is fast and does not require specialized expertise. It allows you to import data from Excel, CSV or any online source. Moreover, you can integrate multiple data sources to gain useful insights. The basic version of MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop is free. For advanced visualization, one can upgrade the same to Analytics Enterprise version.

Domo
Domo is a cloud-based dashboarding tool. Domo imports data from different databases, Excel, CSV and even social media platforms. The company is relatively new (founded in 2010) but its cloud-based platform is quickly gaining prominence against the already established BI vendors. Domo's dashboard is user-friendly and the tool offers different self-assembling pre-built pages based on data input. The most useful way of using Domo is to combine multiple sources to build a perfect story for your data.

QlikView
This tool quickly analyzes data in multiple dimensions. QlikView is powered by In-Memory technology which means the data is loaded in memory and available for instant associative search and analysis. QlikView adroitly works with a variety of data sources including Salesforce.com, Oracle, spreadsheets, and CSVs. It is fast to deploy and works efficiently to offer perfect visuals on the data. The tool was developed by Visual Intelligence in 2002 originally to provide services to the New Zealand market.

In the digital age where our systems are flooded with information ranging from clients to billing, visualization becomes a source of competitive advantage. Organizations make effective decisions by transforming raw data into reports, dashboards and infographics thereby providing quick business insights.

All the four tools help organizations mine and visualize data effectively. These tools have the ability to scale data based on business expansion and are easy to integrate. However, pretty pictures can sometimes be misleading. When a visual is backed with a statistical result, the outcome will be impeccable. As data continues to grow in volume, velocity, and variety, the technique is to visualize the data in such a way that the purpose is communicated effectively.