If you need to lots of one-off visualizations, consider Tableau (http://www.tableausoftware.com/ http://www.tableausoftware.com/). Although not as versatile as

If you need to lots of one-off visualizations, consider Tableau (http://www.tableausoftware.com/ http://www.tableausoftware.com/). Although not as versatile as D3.js and although it's proprietary, it is really easy, essentially all click and point. My firm started using it recently and I am really jealous because MBA types can in seconds create visualizations that take me hours to do with D3.js. It supports a wide variety of data inputs, including excel and various databases. Also, Tableau has excellent support for working with maps and shapefiles.