Data presentation can be beautiful, elegant and descriptive. There is a variety of conventional ways to visualize data - tables, histograms, pie charts and bar graphs are being used every day, in every project and on every possible occasion.
Look to independent resources with proven credibility, like the non-profit James J. Hill Reference Library, a trusted source of practical business information. The organization recently premiered BizToolkit (www.biztoolkit.org) and the Biz Info Library (www.bizinfolibrary.org).
The article, entitled DIY Detection: Competitive Intelligence for SMEs is by the Australian based consultant, Vernon Prior, and gives a very comprehensive description of how to do CI on a low budget. (I wrote an article several years ago for the sadly defunct Competia newsletter on a similar topic - you can still read the article Competitive Intelligence on a Small Budge