Data Mining, a hi-tech buzzword for many years, is about excavating useful patterns which are hidden deep in your data to give you valuable insights you could not otherwise find. I was looking for a data mining tool in the same broad price bracket as Excel but which was also robust and did not require you to be a mathematics genius to use it. Surprisingly I managed to find a product which exactly met my needs!

Here is an excellent web link plus two great books which address the question which diagram or chart should I use to best communicate different types of information visually. With at least 40 types of diagram and new ones/variants constantly being invented this is a hot topic!

One of the most useful aspects of Microsoft Excel is its ability to quickly slice and dice customer data from live systems to identify important trends and behaviors which can inform strategy. In this article and screencast I share a 7-step plan, illustrated with a worked example, for Instant Customer Analytics using Excel.

I have been intrigued with a new iphone app called RoamBi ("roaming business intelligence") which allows the creation of "secure mobile dashboards and visualizations" on iphones and ipads for individuals (free) and enterprises (not free) using data from excel plus other data-rich enterprise applications such as Business objects and Salesforce.com.

Three new types of graphing/charting object - sparklines, bullet charts and heat maps used in conjunction with a powerful new technique known as micro-charting, which allows complete mini charts to be embedded in single cells, can transform online dashboards, business scorecards, and what-if simulations. Here is a simple introduction.

Interesting post on the idashboard blog which shows up how mass sentiment expressed through social media such as twitter can be automatically extracted into data visualization software and the results displayed in almost real-time. The number of applications for this type of social media dashboarding must be huge in both business and civic engagement

I am sharing my set of powerful web-based interactive business simulations with their real-time graphs, dashboards, sliders, guages and avatars. I developed these over a number of years using the excellent ithink simulation environment as essential tools to support what-if analysis, management learning games, experiential learning, balanced business scorecards and scenario planning.

The Discipline of Market Leaders (TDML) by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema (1997) equips the leadership of an enterprise with a choice of 3 strategies for competing in the marketplace - Customer Intimacy, Operational Excellence or Product Leadership. TDML says you must excel in one of these AND maintain minimum thresholds for the other two. Here is a little web-based management simulation which lets you to test TDML strategies virtually before betting your business on them!