How Heat Map Visual Analysis Works
Heat map visual analysis solutions enable you to:
Rapidly identify performance trouble, before it is out of control Understand how key budget details fit in the big picture Reveal underlying patterns and relationships that indicate key cost drivers Discover resource allocation problems and opportunities
Heat maps allow you to view financial performance data for hundreds of units or departments and
to grasp in seconds which are at risk, how important they are, and how they compare to other, related
departments. Heat maps use size, color and grouping to visually convey
quantitative and other information so that even complex relationships and large volumes
of information can be understood rapidly.
Keying size and color to critical measures like total budget, cost overrun, and profitability,
and grouping data according to categories like location, division, manager, or type of activity,
heat maps offer a powerful tool that enables more people to answer unanticipated questions
far more effectively than they ever could using only standard dashboards, reports and graphs.
In the heat map at right, each box represents a single project, with size tied to
budgeted cost, and color keyed to a performance index ranging from green (on-track)
to red (problematic performance).
Simple reports can tell you what projects are in trouble, but lack the broader
context. Yet even a simple heat map visual analysis, like that at right, allows you
to rapidly identify hot spot problems and to see how those problems relate to the
rest of the context - to see the big picture and vital details all at once in a single
view.
Heat maps let you easily interact with data to push beyond simplistic good/bad or
on-track/off-track information and to discover the underlying issues and trends that
have business impact.
For example, a wealth of information is revealed by grouping project status data by
key categories, such as the responsible manager and location of the
project. Even a brief review of the heat map at right clearly reveals three critical
issues:
The manager in the lower right is in trouble;
The top left manager is overloaded, with some projects approaching critical
status;
There is a pattern of trouble with Atlanta-based projects for the manager
at lower left.
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