What is it?
Everything is simple - a dashboard is an application that helps you to keep track of key company performance indicators. Data is automatically summarized, structured and displayed on an interactive panel in the form of graphs, charts, diagrams and provides a clear overview of business performance.
For whom?
Dashboard is a business analytics tool for entrepreneurs, executives, top managers, marketers and business analysts.
For what?
Entrepreneurs - helps to control their business.
Executives - helps to track the performance of the company.
Top managers - helps to evaluate the productivity of departments and individual employees.
Marketers and business analysts – helps to find out which marketing tools work better, and which ones work worse, and adjust the business development strategy.
Report Types
• Operational reports - show the current situation in the business.
• Strategic - track key performance indicators.
• Analytical - process data to determine development trends.
Operational reports are needed in sales departments, call centers, service centers, strategic ones are ideal for managers who need KPI indicators and reports on the work of the company as a whole. Analytical reports are used by business analysts to develop business goals.
Operational reports
They are needed to track progress towards the goal. Their main difference from the rest of the reports is an instant data update.
Strategic Reports
Strategic dashboards are used to visually represent key performance indicators (KPIs). Most often needed by business owners and company executives. Data on the dashboard is regularly updated, but not as often as in operational reports. It is enough to set the update interval once a day to understand the whole situation.
Analytical Reports
Analytical reports are needed to visualize large volumes of data for analysis, research of trends, forecasting results. A concise analytical report helps to structure and find information. Most often they are used by business analysts. The data should be as accurate as possible, so they are not often updated (yes, this is a paradox). The analytic reports also include advanced BI features — presentation and special requests.
Dashboard Goals
The main rule of business: you cannot control what you do not measure. The purpose of the dashboard is to help executives and owners to track performance in order to control the business.
Dashboards display up-to-date information and instantly show changes in the company’s work, all that remains for you is to monitor indicators and adjust employees' work on time.
Even a small monthly improvement of 2% will give a tangible profit per year. Therefore, you need to constantly monitor indicators and constantly improve them.
The advantages of dashboards
• Help in continuous improvement of team work.
• Show real data throughout the organization - employees do not have thoughts that they are not being told something.
• Help to make the right business decisions, as they always show relevant data.
• Save time and money - no need to print tons of paper and spend several hours, or even days to create a summary report on the work of the department.
All this gives the main thing - synchronization and established business processes in the organization.
