The purpose of Financial Planning and Analysis is not to build perfect forecasts and financial solutions. The purpose is simply to make better business decisions. Numbers themselves can support decision-making, but the story convinces people to make the right decision. This article will discuss best practices in data visualisation that resonate with financial and non-financial people alike.
 

Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard is a familiar concept, still widely used today, often falling to FP&A or Strategic Planning teams to create and then monitor. This process can be very challenging and problematic to deliver. This blog focuses on some practical observations and tips regarding the implementation of a scorecard, designed to help you get buy-in from the rest of the organisation.

Research shows that the human retina can transmit data to the brain about 60,000 times faster than it can transmit simple text! On top of processing visuals faster, people retain visual information at more than three times the rate of text alone.

According to Google's Chief Economist, Dr. Hal Varian, "The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it— that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades."

To paraphrase the concept of Occam's razor, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex explanations. In a sense, the answer is in the question, "How do we make the complex easier to understand?" Keep the explanations simple.

Finance staff should find Logos the easiest dimension to work with. As opposed to sales who may use only a small part of the whole facts to support their story.