Visualizing Time Series Data for Early Stage Business Analytics - The Case of Vehicle Telematics Data

Abstract

Applied business analytics (BA) projects commonly have time series data as a basis. While data analysts have the knowledge and tools to handle complex data, decision makers often struggle to develop an intuitive understanding of the data. In this paper, we highlight how data visualization carried out in the early stages of the BA process can help overcoming this issue. Our insights are based on a use case with a leading Swiss car retailer for which we derived driving behavior characteristics from vehicle telematics data. Specifically, we present three visualizations of raw and partially processed telematics data. We show how each visualization enriches interdisciplinary discussions and helps to create a common starting point for successive steps of the BA pipeline. Finally, we discuss the impact of the visualizations on the creation of new use cases and fast adoption.