What Is A Digital Dashboard?

A digital dashboard is an analysis tool that allows business users to monitor and analyze their most important data sources in real time. With interactive data visualizations, digital dashboards allow for an improved decision-making process and continuous growth

The user can, then, oversee a number of critical areas by displaying historical trends, actionable insights, and real-time information in a digestible, presentational format.

If you're curious to present your insights in a meaningful way,?online data visualization?is a powerful tool to do so indeed – data-driven dashboards offer a means of gaining access to vital information and delivering it throughout the organization with ease.

The 6 Key Benefits Of Using Digital Dashboards

Now that we’ve looked at a definitive digital dashboard definition, we will continue to explore the six fundamental benefits of using these?online data analysis?tools within your business.

Decision-making:?The accessible visual nature of digital dashboards facilitates faster?data-driven decision-making?in all critical aspects of the organization by empowering users to analyze and drill down into important metrics and insights with ease.
Accessibility:?Expanding on our previous point, the fact that these kinds of dashboards offer intuitive data visualization means that comprehensive training isn’t necessary. On the contrary – modern dashboards are designed to be accessible and easy to navigate. Their graphical nature allows for easy interaction with invaluable information.
Mobility:?Digital dashboards are customizable and present every single strand of relevant information in one central location and the best platforms are also accessible through?mobile devices and apps, which means you can gain access to essential information no matter where you are in the world.
Business intelligence:?By gaining the ability to access past, real-time, and predictive analytics in addition to clear-cut indicators aimed at growth, evolution, and professional development, you will enhance your team's?business intelligence skills?– and ultimately, get ahead of your competitors.
Benchmarking:?Sector or industry aside, the best way to achieve or even exceed your goals is by working to clearly define benchmarks that align with your most important objectives. Digital-style dashboards feature dynamic visual key performance indicators that not only serve up invaluable real-time information but will also help you gain a deep understanding of what you need to do to meet?important milestones.
Communication:?Organizational silos kill productivity and stunt innovation. The flexible yet detailed nature of BI-based dashboards makes sharing and discussing data-driven discoveries swift, simple, and effective. In turn, such tools encourage cross-departmental communication while breaking down communication barriers - both of which are essential to success in the modern age.
How Do I Make A Digital Dashboard: Best Practices

Now that you have a working knowledge of the benefits and a data dashboard definition for reference, we will move on to the next step.

To help you understand the key ingredients of data-driven dashboards - those that yield real results - here’s a glance at best practices.

1. Take care of your design

First of all, let’s focus on design. To get maximum value from your dashboards, you should always ensure that your design is clear, concise, and present only the information that is relevant to your organization – nothing more, nothing less. Visually, you should always ensure your dashboard helps to tell you a story and answers all of the questions related to your business’s performance directly, meaning you should never cram in too many widgets as they will only serve to convolute matters. Moreover, you should place all of your information in a logical format that will help you paint a panoramic picture of your information. Consider placing tables at the bottom of the page as they typically offer less value than charts, graphs, or other metrics. To help you on your way, you can see our guide on the most popular?dashboard ideas.

2. Communicate with stakeholders

Secondly, you should sit down collaboratively with other key stakeholders within the business and decide on your business’s core aims and goals, both time-sensitive and ongoing.?

This process is vital to giving your development efforts a clearcut direction from the outset - ensuring a healthy return on investment (ROI) as well as sustainable commercial growth.

Essentially, you’ll be able to make sure that your dashboards are designed to offer practical value and, therefore, actionable results.

3. Consider your audience

Expanding on our last point, when you’re developing a modern dashboard, it’s important that you consider the end-user and how it will benefit them.

To do so effectively, thinking about your core aims and goals is essential as it will give you a solid indication of why you’re using these tools for your business.?

Are you looking to prove the value of your recent sales and marketing campaigns to external investors? Do you want your customer service operatives to understand how their processes or performance impact the business? Is offering your HR managers the insight they need to streamline their recruitment processes the aim of the game?

By exploring your core goals as well as how your users (or recipients) will interact with your electronic dashboard data, you will create informational hubs that get straight to the point and offer a wealth of business-boosting value.

4. Take advantage of the 5-second rule

Known in the design world as the “five-second rule,” your creation should always provide relevant information in around – you guessed it – five seconds. If that’s not the case, you should go back to the drawing board and make the tweaks necessary to make your dashboard more digestible. One way of ensuring this is the case is by employing the “Inverted Pyramid” method where your most urgent or “newsworthy” information is displayed at the top, followed by your most important metrics and details, with any other relevant or miscellaneous information presented at the bottom, as shown in the diagram below. Now, while this type of framework is usually synonymous with journalism, it’s becoming an increasingly?valuable blueprint?in data-driven dashboard design.

**Source:?Wikimedia Commons**

5. Use contrast and be consistent

In addition to considering the “five-second rule,” you should also aim to use contrasting colors or fonts for different headings and visualizations to draw the users’ eyes to the right places at the right time and make it easier to extract relevant insights at a glance.

But when designing your dashboards and choosing color or font schemes, it’s important that you keep your choices consistent across the board to avoid any potential confusion or costly data misinterpretations.

For additional visual and function-based tips, read our complete guide on essential?dashboard design?principles and best practices.

6. Set the right key performance indicators

When we define digital dashboards, it’s always important to remember that the primary goal of the?best BI tools?is to provide actionable information on a specific area of the business. That said, when creating or developing data-driven dashboards, it’s vital that you focus on the most relevant info while working with the right benchmarks, no matter if you need to work on?HR KPIs, procurement, or marketing. By looking long and hard at your core company goals, you will be able to select dynamic KPIs that will provide interactive visualizations that empower you to drill down into specific organizational strategies, processes, and functions. By choosing your metrics wisely, not only will you be able to identify strengths and spot weaknesses, but you will gain the ability to tell a story with your data, making it more accessible to other stakeholders within the business.

7. Select the right charts and visualizations

With the right presentation and representation, digital dashboard platforms will be one of the best investments you will ever make. In addition to leveraging a dashboard with key performance indicators, you should always further refine your efforts by considering which chart types will prove most effective for the story you’re looking to tell or the insights you’re looking to display. To help guide your development efforts, here is a quick rundown of the most powerful chart types for digital dashboards in a business environment:

Bar charts
Line charts
Sparklines
Scatterplots
Bubble plots
Number charts
Maps
Area charts

You can get acquainted with these powerful interactive visualizations by exploring our definitive guide to choosing the right?data visualization types?for your business.

8. Paint a vivid picture

With your visualizations in place, you should set realistic benchmarks to measure your success in every key area.

Over a short period, you will begin to see an informational picture forming. If your performance indicators tell a logical story and paint a vivid picture at a glance, your visualization arrangement and design are optimal. If you find that certain segments of information are laborious to analyze or feel like a vital piece of the puzzle is missing, you should go back to the drawing board and tweak your design.

To set you on the right path, here’s our?guide to data-driven storytelling?for your reading pleasure.

9. Develop a sustainable informational culture

Once you’ve reached a place where your digital dashboards are operating at maximum informational efficiency, it’s important to ensure that your newfound BI tools and practices filter down to every single department and person within the organization.

With your reports and templates balanced and digestible, you should empower everyone within the business to use these tools to their (and your) advantage by assigning appropriate user permissions based on the level of accessibility they will require.

It’s also important to run workshops to train everyone on how to interact with the new tools while offering access via mobile devices for remote working situations.

By offering the right training and holding regular company updates, you will maximize the value of your new processes, becoming more scalable and adaptable in the process. This brings us to our next point.

10. Keep on changing; keep on evolving

We live in an ever-evolving tech-driven age where technology, tools, and organizational approaches are in a constant state of flux. That said, to ensure your electronic dashboard or dashboards continue to offer maximum value, periodically reviewing them and making necessary tweaks or updates is a must.

While your reports may offer all the benefits of digital dashboard software today, they could prove less powerful in the not-so-distant future.???????????????????

Take the time to consider how your goals or values may have changed and examine your existing KPIs, charts, and design elements. And if you feel change or improvement is necessary - take action. Doing so will ensure you stay ahead of the game.?

By following these best practices, you will create a?BI dashboard?that is not only efficient but also offers optimum value to everyone in the business, role, or department aside.

With these best practices in mind, you will create an open, collaborative, and idea-driven?internal culture?that will set you apart in your niche while making your company more efficient than you ever thought possible.

Your Chance:?Want to build your own, professional digital dashboard?
Try our modern dashboard software for 14 days, completely free!
Top Digital Dashboard Software Features

So far, we’ve outlined a clear definition with clarity, and looked at how to create successful data-driven analysis tools. Now, it’s time to look at top digital dashboard capabilities - or features.

1. Data connectors

One of the best features of modern analytics management tools is?data connectors. These dynamic connectors offer the ability to connect a wealth of popular platforms (the likes of SQL Azure, Amazon Aurora, DropBox, Google Adwords, and Oracle, for example) and consolidate the information into one central location.

In doing so, you can access every single relevant metric and insight across platforms with ease, bringing your information to life with interactive visualizations, saving time, boosting analytical efficiency, and eliminating fragmentation in the process.

2. Interactive features

In terms of data-driven platform capabilities, working with robust, adaptable, cutting-edge?dashboard software?will ensure that everything you do is optimized for ongoing and sustainable success.?

To make on-the-spot data analysis possible, today’s design tools are equipped with a host of interactive features designed to make drilling down into specific metrics, filtering information, zooming into charts or visualizations, and customizing dashboards as swift, simple, and accessible as possible.

3. Many chart types & visualization options

Working with the right digital dashboard with key performance indicators will offer you a panoramic view of your most invaluable organizational metrics in all core areas, from finance and?HR reporting?to IT support, customer service, internal performance, marketing strategy, and beyond. The digital dashboard capabilities of such tools are vast, as you can gain access to every facet of information from one easy-to-navigate, centralized location.?

Modern?BI dashboard software?provides access to a range of dynamic graphs, charts, or visualization tools that will empower you to extract practical insights that you never knew existed while allowing you to formulate powerful strategies using a mix of historical, predictive and real-time data.

4. Cross-device accessibility

Digital dashboard development tools are optimized for almost every type of device imaginable -? including smartphones and tablets.?

This level of cohesive cross-device accessibility will empower everyone in your business to benefit from access to invaluable data-driven insights 24/7. In turn, you will foster greater internal innovation and improved communication, and ultimately, benefit from accelerated growth.

5. Enhanced user-control management & security

Another key feature present within modern analytical tools capabilities is advanced user-control management and security.

With a digital business dashboard, it’s easy to set user roles to give the right people the right level of access while keeping your data safe and secure. You can set user controls based on these four areas:

Admin
Editor
Power viewer
Viewer

These four tiers of access mean that everyone in the organization can benefit from the power of data, interacting with your dashboards in a way that is appropriate to role, necessity, or level of seniority.

If you want to see an interactive data platform in action, make sure you check our tutorial and get a taste of how your business could benefit from professional visualizations.

6. Automation features

Digital dashboard capabilities are so powerful in our tech-driven age that it’s possible to create automated reports based on a range of functions and features.

The ability to automate certain reporting and informational management processes makes digital dashboard software an invaluable asset to any organization as these features boost output while allowing your internal talent to focus on more complex or creative tasks.

Armed with AI technology, these powerful tools can also deliver automatic alerts based on a number of parameters, such as when a new trend emerges or you’ve reached a certain benchmark.

If you want to learn more about the topic check out our interactive guide on?automated reporting.

7. Embedding capabilities

Any digital dashboard worth its salt comes complete with embedding capabilities. This concept is simple yet incredibly useful:?you can add the platform or reports to your existing framework (your intranet, in-house application, or website, for example),?saving on development costs while gaining access to a wealth of invaluable interactive features.

Another advantage of an?embedded dashboard?is that you can improve your informational security by restricting access where necessary, which is especially vital if you’re sharing your reports via external portals.

8. Multiple design options

A digital business dashboard with true BI-boosting capabilities offers multiple design options that are not only practical but also easy to implement with minimal technical knowledge.

In addition to offering a host of customization options that allow you to change the page layout and alter the visualizations you work with, it’s also possible to ‘white label.’

White labeling allows you to customize your reports with your company branding, logo, color scheme, and general visual identity, which is an effective awareness tool when presenting your discoveries to clients or external stakeholders.

Take Advantage Of Digital Dashboard Examples

We’ve explored a digital dashboard definition and its value in a business context, now we’re going to share six real-life examples that drill down into key areas of management, IT, service & support, sales, social media, and retail.

1. Investor Relations Dashboard

For those in a management position, keeping a firm grip on the company’s operational initiatives is essential – but curating, calculating, and communicating key insights about the business’s overall situation are equally important. That’s where this dashboard comes in:

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The investor relations dashboard, part of our?management dashboard?examples series, serves up priceless insights centered on the company’s investors, the information that they would like to see, and the type of insights that help ensure the health and consistency of these relationships.

Drilling down into important indicators including return on assets, return on equity, and P/E ratio as well as the all-important share price, this digital dashboard tools provide all critical investment-centric information in one central location.

Primary KPIs:

Return on Assets
Return on Equity
P/E Ratio
2. IT Cost Dashboard

As digital technologies evolve and internal systems become increasingly hyper-connected, the ability to track and manage your?IT KPIs, especially costs, is pivotal to the ongoing success of your organization.

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By gaining a more in-depth view of elements including IT return on investment (ROI), a detailed breakdown of IT costs, and how those costs offset against revenue, this digitally-driven dashboard software offers all of the tools for continual departmental success and development.

Every IT manager or decision-maker has to factor costs into their daily operations, and the metrics offered by this particular dashboard will help drive down spending while boosting efficiency. A testament to the power of digital dashboards in a professional environment.

Primary KPIs:

IT ROI
IT Costs Break Down
IT Costs vs. Revenue
3. Customer Satisfaction Dashboard

Without a doubt, customers are the beating heart of almost any organization, and keeping your customers happy will result in ongoing commercial success. To help with such initiatives, the customer satisfaction dashboard focuses on all of the?customer service KPIs?and metrics necessary to track, analyze, and make positive changes to increase overall customer engagement and satisfaction levels.

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Here you will be able to enhance the level of customer experience you offer, improve your consumer touchpoints (websites, landing pages, etc.), deal with issues more swiftly, and boost customer retention rates overtime? – essential to growth, evolution, and development.

Primary KPIs:

Customer Satisfaction
Net Promoter Score
Customer Effort Score
Customer Retention

“You can’t solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level.” –Albert Einstein

4. Sales Digital Dashboard

A data dashboard template with a great deal of depth features a comprehensive mix of sales metrics, each designed to help modern sales teams monitor revenue while reducing churn rate and formulating strategies that boost profits on a sustainable basis.

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In addition to helping sales representatives monitor performance over time, this cutting-edge sales template offers a wealth of insight into cost breakdown as well as an interactive?sales chart?showing incremental sales revenue, among others.

Visually balanced and built to cover all strategic bases, this is?the?sales dashboard?you need for both responsive, at-a-glance information and long-term strategic planning.

This is one of our most powerful and result-driven digital dashboard examples to date and a tool that will ensure your sales continue to grow over time.

Primary KPIs:

Revenue per Sales Rep
Customer Churn Rate
Upsell & Cross-Sell Rates
Profit Margin per Sales Rep
Incremental Sales by Campaign
5. LinkedIn Company Page Dashboard

The fifth of our digital dashboard examples, this most dynamic of additions focuses on optimizing your success through LinkedIn—the world’s number one professional social network.

**click to enlarge**

Designed specifically to manage the ongoing growth and evolution of your company’s official Linkedin page, this fluid visual representation of core?LinkedIn metrics?will help you understand how to encourage engagement and expand your reach on the platform.

Digital dashboards in a business environment don’t get much more valuable than this, because if you have the power to optimize your LinkedIn company page, you will start to generate a comprehensive?social media report?that will enable you to gain a wealth of new leads, forge new business bonds, and become more authoritative in your field.

This perfect storm of metrics, visualizations, and KPIs will ensure that you have the right content at the right moment, accelerating your commercial success as a result.

Primary KPIs:

Followers’ Demographics
Number of Followers
Impressions & Reach
Engagement Rate
Company Update Stats.