For instance, in the manufacturing industry, where staying on schedule is crucial—digital dashboards are bringing about a marked difference. Considering how raw materials and finished goods must flow seamlessly, digital dashboards can be used to access live updates on stock levels across warehouses and production facilities. They display how much raw material is consumed daily, track shipment delays from suppliers, and highlight reorder points.

Digital dashboards can also be used to monitor machinery health, alerting teams when machines are operating slower than expected. Unlike static dashboards that rely on manual data refreshes and periodic snapshots—digital dashboards offer real-time updates, live tracking, and in-depth insights, in turn empowering manufacturers to adjust workflows on the go, prevent production halts, and improve on-time delivery rates.

The key benefits of switching to digital dashboards

As per an IDC report, 90% of corporate strategies consider data to be a critical enterprise asset.

In line with this, digital dashboards are replacing static, lifeless dashboards and advancing a data-first culture across organizations globally. 

Whether tracking profit margins, campaign performance, or customer satisfaction scores—digital dashboards are translating complex, raw data into meaningful insights and helping teams communicate their findings in a relevant manner.

Digital dashboards have multiple benefits to offer. Let's now run by some of the many ways in which digital dashboards are helping teams make informed decisions, improve productivity, and confidently respond to challenges on a factual basis.

• Integrating data for a single source of truth

What digital dashboards do is that they bring together data from multiple siloed sources into one unified view. As a result, teams no longer need to switch between tools to access data, reducing the errors caused by disparate data sources. With digital dashboards, even a non-IT team player like a sales rep can access customer data, new leads, commissions earned, and sales trends in one place.

• ​​Enabling quick decisions with live insights

Real-time updates on digital dashboards allow businesses to monitor metrics like sales KPIs and inventory levels as they happen. This immediacy enables informed decision-making and data-backed actions.

• Contextualizing dashboards for specific business needs

Based on the overarching goals of organizations and subsequent team-wise objectives, businesses can customize metrics and data visualizations to align with what matters most to them.

For instance, let's say your finance team is aiming for cost optimization; they can use a digital dashboard focusing on expenses and variances across departments:

• Enabling collaboration through shared data access

With digital dashboards, team members across the board can get a transparent view of key metrics, enabling greater collaboration and secure data sharing across the organization. For example, to improve outcomes, marketing and sales teams can use shared dashboards to align marketing campaigns with sales targets.

• Saving time with automated reporting

Backed by automated reporting capabilities, digital dashboards can reduce the need for manual data compilation, minimizing errors and freeing up time for higher-value tasks. As such, management and C-suite need not wait around for end-of-week reports; they can instantly access updated metrics, accelerating decision-making and enabling everyone to be on top of key business performance metrics.

​​Real-world examples of industries using digital dashboards

Across industries, businesses are relying on digital dashboards to leverage real-time, data-driven insights.

From tracking supply chain performance to monitoring customer interactions and overseeing employee performance—digital dashboards are empowering businesses to succeed with data-driven findings.

Here's a look at how some of the leading industries are benefitting from using digital dashboards:

• SaaS

With SaaS digital dashboards, companies no longer need to spend months developing analytics tools. Besides, SaaS companies that embed real-time analytics and intuitive dashboards within their app can keep their users better engaged.

SaaS companies can also track metrics like feature adoption, customer churn, and subscription trends that help them identify and address issues before they escalate.

DataBrain's embedded analytics and digital dashboards transform SaaS platforms into data powerhouses, allowing these companies to automate reports, engage users, and increase their overall value proposition for users.

‍

• Transport and logistics

With up-to-the-minute updates and interactive data representations, transport and logistics digital dashboards help businesses streamline operations and make quick decisions that impact everything from delivery timelines to maintaining optimum inventory levels.

DataBrain's powerful analytics capabilities are being used by industry leaders to monitor fleet performance, transportation routes, cargo conditions, fuel efficiency, and shipment status and stay ahead with a comprehensive view of logistics.

• Contract management

A contract management digital dashboard centralizes all contract-related data and offers real-time updates on contract renewals, compliance needs, and other financial metrics in one place. These dashboards shed light on every aspect of your contract, providing greater visibility into the lifecycle of each contract, from initiation to completion.

DataBrain offers an SDK solution that enables businesses to build contract management dashboards within their existing systems. Whether you're in IT, healthcare, or legal services—DataBrain's customizable templates enable you to integrate advanced analytics abilities into your favorite tools and simplify the process of building contract management dashboards.

• HR

HR digital dashboards are helping teams take a data-driven approach to managing key personnel metrics. By consolidating critical data in one single dashboard, HR teams can stay on top of hiring trends, turnover rates, and training progress, boosting employee engagement and enhancing their department’s efficiency.

With DataBrain's pre-built HR dashboard templates, businesses can configure dashboards in minutes. Additionally, teams can use a drag-and-drop functionality to track key metrics like employee count and satisfaction indices, add themes and visualizations for clarity, and auto-schedule reports.

• Procurement

From managing costs to assessing supplier performance and improving operational efficiencies—procurement digital dashboards are helping businesses proactively spot inefficiencies and discover new opportunities.

By cutting ad-hoc requests by 90% and enabling self-service functionalities, DataBrain's plug-and-play integrations, no-code tools, and flexible embedding options let businesses quickly build and customize procurement dashboards tailored to their business needs.

Common pitfalls to avoid

Digital dashboards can transform how businesses manage and analyze data—but there are a few issues that might crop up if these dashboards are not implemented correctly.

1. Cluttered visuals: When dashboards are packed with too much data or overly complex visualizations, users struggle to extract insights.

How to address this? Stick to key metrics and use clean and simple visuals to improve clarity and usability.

2. Prioritize user-friendly design: At times, digital dashboards can be overly complex and hard to navigate.

How to address this? It's important to make navigation user-friendly. Additionally, offering guided tours and involving end-users during the design process can ensure you build a tool that is intuitive and easy to use.

3. Integrate real-time updates: Static data reduces the relevance of dashboards.

How to address this? By connecting to live data streams, you can ensure that users can access up-to-date information for timely decisions.

Supercharging digital dashboards with customer-focused and embedded analytics

Digital dashboards are tailoring data to specific business needs. By providing customer-facing and embedded analytics—platforms like DataBrain are empowering teams with actionable and accessible insights.

Businesses can now:

• Track customer behavior to identify product usage and service interactions
• Categorize customers by demographics, preferences, or purchase history
• Dig into historical data to forecast trends and anticipate customer needs
• Enable teams to work with data without leaving their primary platforms by embedding analytics into commonly used tools like CRM and ERP
• Provide task-related insights directly within workflows for immediate action

SpotDraft saved $300k with DataBrain

DataBrain helped SpotDraft, a contract automation and management software, access the tools to deliver powerful insights to their customers.

Using DataBrain's fully white-labeled BI tool tailored for embedded analytics, SpotDraft built customizable dashboards matching their in-house design and loaded the dashboards with features like a metric store and multi-tenancy. With enterprise-grade security, data masking capabilities, and global deployment options—DataBrain helped SpotDraft save $300k and three-quarters of engineering effort.

A checklist for selecting the right digital dashboard

‍

‍