How to create an effective dashboard?

Creating a dashboard from the scratch is no longer a time-consuming process like it used to be. Increased popularity and adoption of dashboards, has enabled businesses to effortlessly create dashboard with features & designs that perfectly align with their requirements. 

1. Define purpose with strategic alignment to business objectives

Dashboards created without a strong purpose behind them often tend to become unused by their intended audience. Most analysts today make the mistake of getting a basic purpose definition and building dashboards based on them. 

To ensure dashboards deliver utmost value, focus on strategically aligning the goal of dashboard creation with key business objectives. Conducting stakeholder interviews with the end users to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that drive decision-making can bring about the necessary clarity required to build a valuable dashboard. 

2. Prepare & model your data with a strong narrative

Data preparation & data modeling are essential for a seamless dashboard creation process. Preparing data revolves more around ensuring its cleanliness, accuracy, consistency, better enabled by proper data transformation layer and implementation of a data governance process. 

Modeling data ensures relevance and context when defining metrics that act as a building block for reports and dashboards. Create a logical flow of information that mirrors the decision-making value chain, enabling users to easily identify and make sense of defined metrics. 

3. Design & plan dashboard layouts-focus on end-user experience

When planning your dashboard layout, focus on optimizing for cognitive processing. A good dashboard is one that focuses on extracting insights rather than being flashy, though visual appeal is important being intuitive and functional takes higher priority. Here are a few ways to make your dashboards super intuitive: 

• Reduce cognitive load by grouping similar metrics. Guide user attention by using visual hierarchies to prioritize critical information. 
• Use progressive techniques to reveal deeper layers of data as users interact. Better implemented, by use of a drill-down navigation system to explore data from high-level summaries to granular details
• Implement a modular design that allows for easy reconfiguration of reports/metrics based on changing business needs.
• Use colors to highlight critical metrics and their status. Create subtle visual cues that guide users towards taking insight based actions.
  

4. Data storytelling–provide better context

Data without a story is just a number. To get your audience engaged and be excited about their data, your dashboards need effective data storytelling. Better represent the data being presented and give users more context by:

• Incorporating interactive data visualizations that respond to user input.
• Using interactions/animations to show trends over time or highlight significant changes
• Experiment with novel chart types that can convey complex relationships more effectively than traditional graphs.
  

5. Personalize & collaborate with adaptive intelligence

Users no longer need to spend weeks/months building, changing and refining their dashboards to show exactly the metrics they need to see. AI-powered analytics can 

• Help implement algorithms to predict & highlight relevant metrics, adjust complexity & depth based on user roles, expertise and seniority. 
• Build intelligent alerting options that notify users of data trends or anomalies. Provide AI-based summaries and intuitive options to share them with key stakeholders.
  

6. Continuous improvement with data-driven feedback loops

Though modern dashboards have come a long way in implementing machine learning algorithms, the technology still isn’t completely foolproof. On average, AI-based dashboards have an initial accuracy of 80% which can be progressively improved by providing constant feedback. Here are a few ways in which you can receive feedback for the dashboards and their augmented analytics capabilities:

• Implement A/B testing to compare different dashboard metrics, layouts, and visualizations.
• Create feedback loops where users can rate the accuracy of an AI-based feature and suggest improvements. 
• Develop a version control system that allows developers and analyst to easily rollback and compare dashboard iterations.
• Analyze user interaction patterns to identify relevant metrics and visualization improvements.
  
  

Types of Dashboards

Dashboards can be categorized based on their purpose, audience, and level of detail. Here are some common types:

Strategic Dashboards

Strategic dashboards help executives and senior management get a high-level overview of business performance. These dashboards focus on long-term goals and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Operational Dashboards

These dashboards help managers and frontline staff monitor day-to-day operations. Often displaying real-time data, these dashboards track performance and identify issues as they arise. 

Tactical Dashboards

Tactical dashboards allow department heads to track progress towards specific goals they care about. They are designed to help make quick short to medium term (days, weeks or months) tactical decisions. 

Analytical Dashboards

Analytical dashboards are designed to help data analysts and BI professionals get an in-depth analysis of their data by allowing for data exploration, trend identification, and predictive analytics.

Examples of Dashboards

Different industries and job functions have unique dashboard requirements.

Finance Dashboards: 

Finance dashboards provide a comprehensive view of an organization's financial health metrics.

1. CFO Dashboard: Tracks overall financial health, including revenue, expenses, profit margins, and cash flow.
2. Investment Portfolio Dashboard: Monitors stock performance, asset allocation, and risk metrics.
3. Accounts Receivable Dashboard: Tracks outstanding invoices, payment trends, and customer credit scores.

Healthcare Dashboards:

Healthcare dashboards offer insights into patient care, hospital operations, and public health trends.

1. Hospital Performance Dashboard: Monitors patient satisfaction, bed occupancy rates, and average length of stay.
2. Clinical Trial Dashboard: Tracks participant enrollment, study progress, and adverse event reporting.
3. Public Health Dashboard: Visualizes disease outbreak data, vaccination rates, and health trends across populations.

Marketing Dashboards:

Marketing dashboards track the effectiveness and ROI of various marketing initiatives and campaigns.

1. CMO Dashboard: Provides a complete view of marketing performance, including campaign effectiveness, brand health metrics, and customer acquisition costs.
2. Digital Marketing Dashboard: Tracks key metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and ROI for various marketing campaigns.
3. Social Media Dashboard: Monitors engagement rates, follower growth, and sentiment analysis across different platforms.

Procurement Dashboard

Procurement dashboards provide a comprehensive view of purchasing activities, supplier relationships, and spending patterns to optimize procurement processes.

1. Spend Analytics: Tracks overall spending patterns, analyzes spend by category, supplier, and department, and identifies cost-saving opportunities.
2. Supply Chain Analytics: Monitors supplier quality, delivery performance, and evaluates supplier risk and compliance.
3. Contract Management Dashboard: Tracks contract status, expiration dates, compliance, and analyzes contract utilization and performance.

Logistics Dashboard

A logistics analytics dashboard offers real-time insights into supply chain operations, inventory management, and transportation efficiency to streamline logistics processes.

1. Inventory Management Dashboard: Monitors real-time inventory levels, tracks stock turnover rates, and forecasts demand across multiple warehouses.
2. Route Optimization Dashboard: Analyzes delivery routes, monitors traffic patterns, and tracks transportation costs to optimize logistics operations.
3. Warehouse Operations Dashboard: Monitors picking rates, order fulfillment times, and analyzes warehouse space utilization and efficiency.Wa

Human Resource Dashboards:

HR dashboards visualize key metrics related to workforce management, employee engagement, and talent acquisition.

1. Recruitment Dashboard: Tracks job application rates, time-to-hire, and source of hire metrics.
2. Employee Engagement Dashboard: Monitors satisfaction scores, turnover rates, and participation in company initiatives.
3. Training and Development Dashboard: Tracks completion rates of training programs, skill assessments, and career progression.

Sales Dashboards:

Sales dashboards display real-time sales performance data, pipeline information, and customer acquisition metrics.

1. Sales Performance Dashboard: Monitors revenue targets, sales pipeline, and individual rep performance.
2. Customer Acquisition Dashboard: Tracks new customer growth, customer lifetime value, and churn rates.
3. Regional Sales Dashboard: Compares sales performance across different geographical regions.

Benefits of Dashboards in Business

A study by Gartner found that organizations using dashboards for analytics and business intelligence saw a 24% improvement in operational efficiency, showing how much dashboards add value to an organization. 

Here are a few quick benefits of using a dashboard: 

Improved Data Accessibility: 

Dashboards centralize data from multiple sources, making it easily accessible and reducing the time spent on manual data gathering.

Example: A marketing automation platform with an interactive analytics module can allow customers to directly access detailed campaign performance metrics, audience segmentation data, and ROI calculations without leaving the main application. This feature eliminates the need for users to export data or use separate tools for analysis, significantly improving data accessibility and user experience.

Real-Time Monitoring: 

Dashboards provide real-time updates on critical metrics and KPIs, ensuring businesses can respond swiftly to changing trends and emerging opportunities or issues.

Example: An e-commerce company sets up an analytics that allows users to track website traffic, conversion rates, and server performance in real-time. When a flash sale causes a sudden spike in traffic, the customer is immediately alerted to potential server overload issues, allowing them to quickly allocate additional resources and prevent site crashes.

Enhanced Decision-Making: 

By presenting data visually and intuitively, dashboards enable faster and more informed decision-making.

Example:  A financial management software with predictive analytics enabled in their reporting module allows users to access AI-driven forecasts and scenario planning tools directly within their financial dashboards. This allows CFOs and financial managers (end customers) to make more informed decisions about budget allocation, investment strategies, and risk management without needing to use separate business intelligence tools.

Increased Efficiency and Productivity: 

Dashboards streamline data analysis processes, making them more efficient and less time-consuming.

Example: A project management platform with customizable analytics dashboard allows team leaders can now create and share project-specific KPI trackers, resource allocation charts, and progress reports without leaving the main application. This integration streamlines the reporting process, saving time and increasing overall team productivity.

Pattern and Trend Identification: 

Dashboards excel at identifying patterns and trends that may not be obvious in raw data, aiding in strategic planning and forecasting.

Example: A social media management tool with advanced analytics capabilities can allow users to access AI-powered trend analysis and content performance predictions directly while creating their social media calendar. This feature can help social media managers identify optimal posting times, content themes, and engagement patterns, leading to more effective social media strategies.

Improved Collaboration: 

Dashboards enhance cross-departmental collaboration by offering everyone a unified view of certain metrics.

Example: A customer service SaaS with collaborative analytics features in their ticketing system can help support teams to create and share custom data visualization dashboards that track ticket resolution times, customer satisfaction scores, and common issues across the organization. Facilitating better communication between support, product, and management teams, leading to faster issue resolution and product improvements.

Transparency and Accountability: 

By displaying data to all concerned parties, dashboards create more accountable organizations.

Example: A CRM with customizable goal-tracking analytics in their platform allows sales managers to set team and individual targets, and sales people to monitor their progress in real-time through dashboards. This transparency motivates the sales team and allows for timely interventions when targets are at risk, ultimately driving better sales performance.

The Future of Dashboards

With evolving technology, we're seeing a shift towards a demand for more sophisticated analytics capabilities in dashboards. Here are a few features that modern interactive dashboards have started adopting. 

Augmented Analytics

AI-powered dashboards, which uses machine learning and natural language processing to automate data preparation, insight discovery, and insight sharing, will become the norm. Allowing users to ask questions in natural language and receive instant, AI-generated insights.

Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics:

Dashboards in the future will not only show what has happened (descriptive analytics) or what is happening (real-time analytics) but will also effectively predict what might happen (predictive analytics) and suggest actions to take (prescriptive analytics). This will transform dashboards from passive reporting tools to active decision-support systems at a fraction of the cost required to achieve these capabilities today. 

Immersive Visualization Techniques

Advanced visualization techniques, including virtual and augmented reality, will create more immersive and interactive dashboard experiences, allowing users to "step into" their data for deeper exploration and understanding.

Embrace Modern Interactive Dashboards as Your Competitive Edge

Dashboards have revolutionized the way businesses interact with and understand data. As we continue to generate more information than ever before, these powerful visualization tools will play an increasingly crucial role in helping organizations navigate the data deluge and make informed decisions.

If you are a SaaS business providing a reporting dashboard within your product, empowering your users to build a strong data-driven culture within your product ecosystem is the best way to retain them and increase product usage. Dashboards tailored to SaaS platforms play a crucial role in achieving this, offering real-time insights and actionable metrics to users. Learn more about the essential metrics, KPIs, and examples of effective SaaS dashboards in our detailed guide here.

While you might want to build capabilities to enable this on your own, it is important to understand how much time and resource intensive it can become while effectively deviating you from focusing on your product’s core competencies.

At Databrain, we believe every SaaS business should have the power to give their users the ability to make fast & efficient data-drive decisions. That’s why we focus on building the best analytics that you can embed into your product while you focus on enhancing your product’s core capabilities. 

Case in point: After implementing Databrain, SpotDraft was able to immediately improve their product retention metrics. 

“Using Databrain, we now offer our customers extensive insights out of the box, sparing them the pain of creating their own metrics, all while ensuring they have a seamless experience.”
 - Jaskaran Bhatia, Product Manager - SpotDraft

If you’re looking to build analytics for your SaaS or are in the market for an embedded analytics platform. Give Databrain a try. Start a free trial.

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