Data visualization tools are commonly used today as business intelligence (BI) reporting tools. These tools use automation to collect and process data and then create dashboards that represent company key performance indicators (KPIs) as visuals.
Two qualifications are required to be considered a data visualization tool:
Collect and consumer data from multiple sources, file uploads, database queries, and APIs
Provide visual representation of key performance indicators
Tools can come as proprietary, with enhanced features, and a support team to help troubleshoot. Popular names in data visualization and big data tools include Microsoft, SAP, IBM, and SAS. For those teams with different needs, open source data visualizations tools exist too, like Redash, D3.js, and Google Charts.