Accurate, in-depth data is the lifeblood of your business. Without information about your customers or clients, shipping and logistics, industry trends, purchasing history and more, you’re flying blind. While that might work fine for a business with a single location that only serves customers in the immediate area, it won’t work at all for a company that wants to grow, expand and prosper in the future. However, the problem here is that big data sets can be difficult to manage. In order to use that information, it might be best to utilize intensity maps.

What Are Intensity Maps?

Intensity maps are innovative tools for business owners and managers that provide the means to aggregate complex data sets into a single, coherent whole. They combine any type of data you might have (geographic, buying history, traffic patterns, voting numbers, etc.) into a visual representation that can be utilized immediately without the need to use multiple flow charts, graphs, maps and spreadsheets. In essence, intensity maps allow you to aggregate your business information into a single medium that can be used immediately.

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An Example

To better illustrate the value and utility of intensity maps, let’s look at an example. National news media loves to show maps of voter turnout and results during election years. To do this, they have to take the information that they have available – voter turnout, votes cast per state and much more – and put it into a visual format that viewers can actually relate to. Imagine if a news station attempted to show this information using a spreadsheet – viewers would immediately lose interest and change the channel. However, by combining that information into an intensity map, the news outlet can provide viewers with all the essential information about voting across the entire nation. The most famous example of this would be during national elections with the delineation of votes in the form of blue and red states.

Of course, this is a rather simplistic explanation of these powerful tools, but it’s highly relevant. Your business can do the same thing using any data. In addition, intensity maps are ideal for visualizing big data sets because they combine multiple data sources into a single visual representation. You can easily create an intensity map that shows traffic density within specific corridors, as well as the number of sales in and out of those corridors, on a national scale. In essence, intensity maps give you the means to understand exactly what those massive data sets are telling you in a shorter time, with greater accuracy and less chance of miscommunication.