I come across people who use Insight, Visualization and Analytics; to mean the same thing. Are they all really one and the same? I wonder how we can differentiate these three things within an Organization, especially for developers and business stake holders. Here is my take on this.....

Insight comes when we understand an event in a business and the impact of that event with facts. An event (for eg: credit card transaction) is a normal event which we expect to happen every second if one is running a retail organization. Sending wrong products against a customer order is considered as wrong operational event, the impact on this event is not know when it happens. But both are events according to a business. After careful analysis on the subsequent transactions from that customer who received the wrong products will give us insight on what to expect when a wrong operational event occurs. Insight comes to business with more detailed level of analysis of various transactions. By enabling Adhoc reports on certain important data sets through various filter mechanisms allows us to get an Insight of business data. Insight gives us the ability to know what to expect at an operational level as well as the Impact at organizational level.

Detailed Insight leads you to visualize your business better. Both insight and strong visualization provides the path to predict the future!