Definitions, examples, and best practices. This guide provides practical advice to help you create world-class data dashboards of your own.
A data dashboard is an interactive tool that allows you to track, analyze, and display KPIs and metrics. Modern dashboards allow you to combine real-time data from multiple sources and provide you AI-assisted data preparation, chart creation, and analysis. In this way, data dashboards turn raw data from across your organization into data-driven insights that improve a specific process, a department, or your entire business.
Here are the four key benefits of any modern, well-designed dashboard.
Top dashboard software tools make it easy to customize dashboards to serve distinct purposes for different industries and departments. Here are high-performing examples from specific industries.
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Here are data dashboard examples based on KPIs and metrics relevant to specific roles in an organization.
Here are a few best practices to consider as you build your own dashboards.
Find and connect your data.First, find the data–even real-time data–you'll need to power your dashboards. This data will likely be in different formats and reside in different places such as spreadsheets, data marts, or a data warehouse. Your dashboard tool should be able to combine and transform that raw data into business-ready data you can trust.
Don’t just measure. Measure what matters.Work with your other stakeholders to identify the goals with the most impact on your strategic business outcomes. Use a KPI planner to guide you in defining your KPIs.
Keep your visuals simple.You may be tempted to dive right in and create all sorts of line charts, bubble charts, bar charts, and scatterplots. But stuffing too many complex visualizations in your dashboards can actually make it harder to get quick insights. Try different layouts until you have a dashboard that presents your stories in a clean, simple way..
Keep a consistent look and feel.You and other stakeholders will be able to find the information you’re looking for faster if your dashboard design maintains consistency in look and feel such as layout, colors, styles, and icons.
Embed dashboards where decisions are madeTop dashboard tools make it easy for you to embed (or insert) a dashboard or chart into other apps, business processes, portals, and websites. This lets you explore your data wherever and whenever you or your teams make decisions.
Download our ebook with 4 must-see dashboard examples.
Here are the top mistakes to avoid as you create your dashboards.
The best data dashboards can do much more than tracking KPIs and visualizing data. Here are important capabilities to consider as you find the right dashboard tool for you:
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