I had good conversation with Mitchell Burman of Analytics Operations Engineering in Boston. Like others at the Competing on Analytics Symposium presented by Harvard Business School Press, Burman wants to take the mystery out of BI and make it more accessible to the people who need it. Here's the gist of his argument, in my words:

OK, you've explained something complicated to the CEO. Even if the CEO understands what you've just shown him, that doesn't mean he can turn around and explain it to a whole bunch of other people in the organization. The CEO needs an easy way to share the information that you've just shared with him. Graphics can be useful tools for sharing information. A dynamic graphic can show the effect of various inputs over time. Color thematic mapping is another handy tool for sharing information quickly. A picture is worth a thousand data points.