Businesses move in an environment that is fraught with data that is often difficult to interpret. Dashboards are considered an essential tool in business management as they make all information meaningful.
After a period in which technologies such as Business Intelligence and Big Data were considered optional for companies, we now have a scenario in which more and more companies cannot conceive of their daily management without these tools.
In the 21st century we live in times of high competition, globalized markets and with thousands of tools, sensors or people generating data continuously and in great volume, which become our best ally to make intelligent decisions every day, which make our organization grow or overcome times of crisis.
Any company that stays behind in this area and does not make use of the endless possibilities offered by the data, already shows important weaknesses compared to its competitors, because by not having all the information offered by the data, it is letting go great opportunities materialized in earning time and money.
These are some examples of Business Dashboards commonly used in companies:
We can define a Dashboard as the interactive graphic representation that displays the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) established by the company, which allows to make decisions that result in the achievement of the set objectives.
Data displayed on a Dashboard can come from multiple data sources and be automatically updated by data integration processes. The idea is to have a global view of the company starting with a bird's eye view that summarizes the large numbers in different areas, so that you can drill down into the data to look at the detail and act quickly.
Much of the success of a Dashboard is in asking good questions. That is, what does this Dashboard pretend to solve? By asking the right questions, KPIs will automatically emerge, which are the numerical indicators to be measured. At the same time, to give life to each KPI, it is necessary to have an available data source from which it is fed and to give it a graphic representation through a correct data visualization.
It is a fact that all companies use spreadsheets for their first steps in information gathering and data visualization tasks. Making a Dashboard with tools like Excel is possible but we do not recommend it for several reasons:
The Data Driven Growth movement is based on working every day with the important data, to constantly improve. Precisely the first contact with the data is with Dashboards in which we find the summary and the most important trends of our data. These are some of the benefits:
Professional tools such as Biuwer make it possible for everyone to get the most out of data without prior technical knowledge, thus enabling the creation of reports and Dashboards for quick and easy data analysis.
Let’s see how you can build a Dashboard using Biuwer like the one shown at the beginning of this article. In this example, a company is selling bicycles, both online and in physical store:
In this case, I am interested to know how the Internet channel sales are evolving. Previously, I will have to configure the connection to the database with the available information in Biuwer.
I have to define the right KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), for example:
The same information can be represented in multiple ways. We must select the correct charts and data visualizations to show the KPIs properly.
Using Biuwer it is easy to give access to a Dashboard to the people in the company who will need to make decisions with it. Use the page and card access settings to configure this:
For those cases where it is required to use a Dashboard embedded in an external application outside Biuwer, it can be shared securely, using security tokens associated with users as if they were using Biuwer directly.
Considering all of the above, Dashboards are today a fundamental tool to drive Data Driven Growth, providing the organization's members with the accurate information to achieve business objectives.
Taking advantage of the existence of platforms such as Biuwer, any company, regardless of its sector, can start using Dashboards, thus guaranteeing improvements in the company, for which it will not be necessary to be a data expert or even have previous technical knowledge.
If you are interested in knowing more details, do not hesitate to contact us and we will help you to improve the performance of your company.