Your Business, Your Demands, Your Visio.

For all the billions of people in this world, there's only one of you, one of me, one of anyone. We're all unique and individual. Yet the software we use is not; approximately eighty percent of businesses, (according to a recent report by Forrester Research) use Microsoft Office in some form or another and of those rare exceptions, many will use either OpenOffice or Lotus. We need applications that work with ourselves, but we accept that the tools we use are designed for everyone.

Do we need to just accept this, though? Not necessarily. If you're trying to turn a sheet of figures into a greater understanding of the present and future progress of your enterprise, Microsoft Visio can give you the answers you need in a manner that is tailored to your requirements.

Here's an example: Dave runs a chain of DIY shops dotted around the southwest. Overall, his company's been doing quite well, with respectable profits and pleasing reports of burgeoning customer loyalty. Yet Dave, as happy as he is with this, needs a deeper understanding of how his business is coming along. It's easy enough to print the important numbers onto a sheet, but data graphics in Visio can help our hero to see clearly just what they mean for his organisation.

Dave wants to see how the profitability of his organisation breaks down by location. He can start his diagram with income and expenditure for the company as a whole. A simple panel at the top or side of the diagram illustrates the income and expenditure for the whole company, both with figures and a visual representation of the difference - the Visio 'speedometer' demonstrates at a glance the how far income is (or isn't) outstripping expenditure.

Dave now wants to separate this data by individual shops. He has five branches in the region, and with only a couple of clicks, can create panels just like that for the overall figures, with Visio arranging them automatically to show their relationship to the total. Again, each of these can have the data that Dave needs; again, each of these can be given a visual illustration to make it all the easier to see which branches are performing well and which are struggling. If Dave wants a further depth of detail, he can repeat this straightforward process for individual departments within each branch - from this, it may emerge that Truro's turnover from tiles is helping push profits or that Plymouth's profits are being pulled down by poor performance in the power tool section.

Dave can put in as much or as little information as he wants; if need be, he can bring the diagram all the way down to individual types of nails or colours of paint, with everything automatically arranged in a clear hierarchy, (colours of paint within brands, brands within paint, paint within decorating and so on) - or he can keep everything much simpler. Similarly, any kind of data can be examined this way, be it profit, productivity, absence or whatever Dave needs to know. What's more, using Visio Pivot Diagrams, he can switch between these different pieces of data at the touch of a button, to get a far more complete impression of where his business is heading - whatever Dave wants, Visio can give him and in a form that suits his needs.

Indeed, if there are individual issues he needs to look out for, it's simple for him to make sure Visio will flag them up. If, for instance, sales should hit a certain high or low level in any part of the business he specified, (such as the different branches or nails mentioned above), an icon of Dave's choice can be attached to the relevant entry. Visio comes with numerous image sets, from flags to traffic lights to stars, or Dave can add his own (perhaps he'd like a cute little kitten to flash up whenever a range is selling particularly impressively). Alternatively, each information panel can be coloured to show, at a glance which are performing and which are failing; if there's a level of expenditure which he doesn't want a particular department to go above, the panel for the offending department can turn distinctively red as soon as that is reached (and, just as easily, amber if it's getting worryingly close).

Furthermore, Visio diagrams can be linked to an Excel spreadsheet or Access database, and whenever these are updated, the diagram will be adjusted automatically, keeping Dave on top of all new developments. With these tools at his fingertips, he can gain a much deeper understanding of the position of his business, and expend far less time than he would have done poring over conventional sheets of data. He - and any business manager or professional - could also benefit from enhancing the use of these tools through a short training course.

And once Dave has his bespoke diagram, he needn't keep his understanding of the business to himself. Visio diagrams can be shared with whoever needs them, even with colleagues, clients or shareholders who don't have Visio itself - a Visio Viewer can be downloaded freely from the Microsoft Office website; or, for even wider accessibility, diagrams can be saved as GIF or JPEG image files, or as PDF document files, formats that can be viewed by any modern PC or Mac.

Thanks to Visio and a little training, Dave can see more clearly than ever how his enterprise is coming along today, and where it's likely to head towards in future. Why not take up the same opportunities for your own business?