Benefits of Business Dashboards
A well-designed business dashboard saves time across the entire organization. It reduces the back and forth between employees and managers by facilitating access to data and its interpretation.
Before creating a new dashboard, it is important to ask yourself who the end consumer is. This will help you tailor the measures to their needs.
Real-time dashboards
Real-time dashboards make it possible to track a range of business needs. They serve as tools to evaluate the company's short and long-term strategies, displaying the evolution of key success factors. They also help identify negative trends and take corrective action where appropriate.
The effectiveness of business dashboards depends on the collection, processing, and machine learning methods they rely on. If these methods are faulty, the data displayed on the dashboard will be inaccurate or irrelevant.
Unlike traditional business reports, which are static information pulled at a single point in time, real-time dashboards are updated automatically. This saves time, improves reporting and provides clear information that can be used for strategic decision-making. The user can control how quickly the dashboard updates – for example, they can choose to update it every 30 seconds or at a more personalized interval.
Transparency
Just as a car's dashboard instantly identifies problems and provides feedback, business reporting tools are used to help identify current or historical progress or results. These tools are generally intended for different audiences and purposes.
Analytics dashboards are often built by analysts or line managers and include more data and in-depth analysis to help uncover root causes. They can also be more interactive.
For example, this purchasing KPI analytics dashboard shows the company's cost savings, ROI, and overall spend over a period of time to help identify the underlying factors that have could have contributed to the increase or decrease in indicators. This information can be used to refine strategies and improve efficiency. They can also help businesses avoid costly overspending and find new ways to save money.
Visualization
A dashboard helps you visualize data in a way that is easily understandable. This can help you quickly identify problems and opportunities for improvement. It can also motivate employees to work together to achieve company goals.
Specialized dashboards track a wide range of business functions, including sales, human resources, management, finance and marketing. They can also provide an overview of the entire organization in one place.
When choosing a dashboard tool, make sure it offers features that are important to your business. For example, you may want a dashboard that is easy to use and accessible across multiple devices. Many tools offer backup options in case of data loss. Some also offer single sign-on for easier access and collaboration.
Efficiency
Business dashboards provide a variety of visualizations that can succinctly summarize complex information. For example, using visuals like meters and charts can help a business track government procurement metrics and trends at a glance.
A well-designed dashboard can help businesses save time by providing up-to-date information at a glance. It is no longer necessary to log into systems, request data from developers and wait to receive reports.
It is also useful to customize dashboards for each department or stakeholder. This helps ensure that stakeholders only see the most important information, avoids distractions, and makes information easier to assimilate. In turn, this can inspire action and accountability. For example, an executive who notices that a department is losing ground in a given region can allocate resources to refocus efforts.
Accessibility
When building digital dashboards, consider your audience. This is one of the most important business intelligence best practices that helps you direct your efforts toward success. This includes defining who will use the dashboard and what they need to know.
For example, you can create a dashboard to monitor specific daily operations and processes. This will help your teams take immediate actions or short-term decisions to optimize performance.
You can also integrate your dashboards into popular tools, so your employees can access data without leaving the tool they are using. This allows you to improve accessibility without requiring more work from your team members. For example, you can integrate a dashboard directly into Salesforce to give sales development managers quick access to important data about preparing a lead.