5 Ways Data-Driven Video Storytelling is the Future of Analytics

Imagine you’re changing your car’s flat tire for the first time. What would you choose – your automobile user manual with 5 pictures, or a video showing an actual tire being changed?

Most people would choose the video, because it’s not only engaging and easy to watch, but also the best way to learn granular details. If you didn’t choose the video, keep reading to find out what you’re missing out on!

People love stories. Spreadsheets and rows of numbers won’t launch a thousand ships, but when you spin a story around data it’s easier for leaders to understand and take action.

However, effective data storytelling is not achievable with legacy Business Intelligence tools. The value of analytics lies in finding the "What, Why, and How" story within business data. Traditional visualization tools only answer the "what" - they can't tell you why business metrics changed or how you got to the current state.

Static charts and dashboards can show you that sales grew by 50% this year. But beyond the “What,” you have no way of finding out that this growth was due to 3 new outlets catering to customers in the 30-40 age group. Effective data stories answer “Why” and “How” and take you through the underlying reasons and contributing factors that drive results.

According to Gartner, automated data storytelling will dominate Business Intelligence in the next 4 years. Furthermore, it’s expected that at least 75% of all data stories will be generated automatically using augmented analytics.

Let’s dive into what effective data storytelling looks like and the many advantages it offers to today’s data-driven businesses.

What is data-driven video storytelling?

Data-driven storytelling is the process of transforming raw data into easy-to-understand stories that spur action. Visual aids such as colorful charts, graphs, and dashboards are useful, but only videos can craft compelling stories that help your audience understand "Why."

Insights

Your storyline is the most fundamental element of data storytelling. Thus, your insights need to be accurate and drawn from a real-time data source. Similar to how movies start with a storyboard, you need to first define your most important insights and why they require action.

Of course, your raw data needs to be analyzed to extract insights that are relevant and meaningful to your audience. Artificial intelligence and machine learning models can dive below surface-level analysis to derive deep insights such as anomalies, analogies, seasonality, and predictions.

Presentation

AI-based data visualization helps identify and present analyses and insights in a way that your audience can understand. After discovering relevant insights, you choose the most powerful way to present those findings. Is it a graph, chart, or table? Or an audio-visual story?

Audio-visuals present the entire sequence of events that static visualizations can't capture. In a crowded chart or lengthy table, it's hard to identify the most important takeaways. That’s where audio-visuals have the edge over static visualizations. Videos can zoom in on key insights and draw audience attention where it’s most needed. That's why video data storytelling is the most engaging, effective, and efficient presentation method. Any business that can offer insights through automated videos will stand out from the crowd.

Narrative

Just showcasing data with diagrams won’t inspire your audience. You need a simple language narrative that highlights the importance of your findings in order to optimize decisions. The narrator could be you, or it could be an AI companion who explains insights. Narratives provide structure and context to summarize findings in an easily understandable way.

Combining these three elements is the best way to communicate insights effectively and make data actionable in the modern digital world.

5 ways audio-visual data storytelling benefits businesses

Now that we have an idea of the key components of data-driven video storytelling, let’s look at how it helps improve decisions and grow revenue.

1. Audio-visuals are the only way to convey complete intelligence

Audio-visual stories make it possible to communicate past, present, and future insights. Thus, beyond presenting “what” happened in the past, you can also explain “why” and "how" business KPIs changed. A series of graphs can't show why you had anomalously high Q4 sales in New Jersey, or what factors affected the change. You need a narrative to add business context.

2. Audio-visuals improve learning and communication

As humans, we understand stories better than numbers. Watching a “movie” on data insights is the newest and most engaging way of communicating insights. A great piece of data-driven content stands out in a sea of traditional charts and graphs, and helps viewers’ attention focus on what’s truly important.

3. Audio-visuals are more comprehensive than charts

Static presentation methods are no longer sufficient for data storytelling. Audio-visuals help businesses leverage metrics by showcasing actionable insights as stories. Be it in boardroom meetings or sales pitches, audio-visual aids help communicate data easily and instantly boost data-driven decision-making. Data stories are versatile and can be incorporated into any business setting or asset, such as websites and presentations.

4. Audio-visuals democratize insights for all

The power of data in today’s information age, due to complexity, rests in the hands of a select few data analysts who can extract and interpret it. However, a team of 10 data analysts is hard pressed to serve the needs of 1,000 business users. Data storytelling changes that by making data available to all in a self-service way. Automatically generated video stories mean less pressure on data analysts and more power to business users.

5. Audio-visuals automate natural language narratives

Your data analyses are competing for time and attention with leaders’ other priorities. Audio-visuals are the most efficient way to add value, meaning, and context to data. An automated data story can present relevant insights in minutes using audio narratives, like a podcast for your data. Modern analytic technologies like natural language processing and generation can automatically convert structured data into digestible audio-visual narratives.

How to create data-driven stories in seconds

Right now, very few businesses are leveraging video data storytelling because they don’t have the right tools to automate audio-visual narratives. Data visualization has traditionally been a manual process, but this outdated paradigm can’t keep up with the speed of data today.

Data-driven video storytelling is rapidly changing the way we imagine business intelligence. Becoming the first to embrace innovation and achieve automated data stories is an enormous opportunity for any company.

MachEye literally reinvents the world of data storytelling. We’re the only analytics platform that creates interactive audio-visual stories in seconds, without a camera, an editor, or any manual effort.

We connect directly to data sources, make data searchable in natural language, and surface insights with AI/ML models to craft the most persuasive data narratives. Let us help you achieve data-driven storytelling today!

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