Supply Chain Blog

What is Storytelling with Data and How Can You Master it? Get Tips from Cole Nussbaumer Knafflic

This month, we hosted a Data Visualization webinar with bestselling author Cole Nussbaumer Knafflic. Cole wrote the popular book “Storytelling with Data” and is also known for her blog. She’s worked at and with some of the most data-driven companies on the planet, including Google, Adobe, Genentech, JPMC, Target, and the World Bank. She also works with organizations and individuals to help them become more effective data storytellers through workshops. We had a chance to talk to her about some best practices for effective data visualization leading up to the webinar. In this short interview, she shares some of her trade secrets and a sneak preview of what you can find in her book.

1. How do you define storytelling with data?

For me, storytelling with data is the communication step of the analytical process. Let’s consider the analytical process. Perhaps you start off with a question or hypothesis. Then you have to gather the data and clean the data. Next, you analyze the data. At that point, it’s easy to throw it into a graph and be done. But that graph is the only part of the whole process that your audience sees. So it deserves at least as much—perhaps more—attention compared to the other parts of the process, and yet is so often overlooked or given the least amount of time. To take that a step further, my view is that you should never simply show data. Rather, you should make data a pivotal point in an overarching story or narrative. This helps it make sense to your audience, makes it resonate and can help make it stick. This is storytelling with data.

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How to support your S&OP and IBP Process with Modeling and Optimization

Source: Oliver Wight

Optimization is a form of advanced analytics that helps you solve complex decision problems, enabling you to make the best use of your business’ limited resources.* When applied to S&OP and IBP, modeling and optimization enable you to balance out scenarios and perform what-if analyses so you can analyze how these different scenarios will affect your inventory and/or cost. You can gradually enrich your planning process with financial figures, add basic analytics to it, and build your organization with scenario optimization embedded in the core business planning process.

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4 Inspiring Ways Optimization is Being Used for Social Good

Since we started this blog, we’ve been exploring how supply chain optimization can aid the decision-making process and bring organizations better results. We have covered a multitude of methods and techniques applied in the pursuit of supply chain excellence, and have discussed some of the most pressing challenges faced by today’s business leaders. Today, inspired by our mission to bring the benefits of optimization to society as a whole, we will look at 4 inspiring AIMMS use cases which leverage optimization technology not only for business advancement, but for the greater good. Continue reading »

Reimagine supply chains at Gartner’s Supply Chain Executive Conference 2013

Changing market conditions are driving companies to reimagine their supply chain and push the boundaries of conventional thinking. Gartner’s upcoming Supply Chain Executive Conference will delve into key tactics, tools and strategies supply chain leaders can employ to foster growth and efficiency amid rising competition and economic change.

It’s a theme typical to Gartner and their conferences: very strongly focused on global trends, combined with a top-down view on supply chain concepts, approaches, methods and maturity levels. With 750 analysts worldwide, they are capable of putting structure into almost any aspect of supply chain development. But let’s face it, this wealth of information can also be difficult to process: which insights are applicable to your company, how can you apply them to your own supply chain, what should you prioritize? Obviously, you can’t keep up with all their combined output, but they can help you with that as well…

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