7 Golden Rules To Perfect BI Dashboards

Business intelligence is a cutting-edge, technology-driven approach to data analysis and decision-making in short- and long-term operations. By displaying both current and historical data within the context of their business, business intelligence may assist firms in making better decisions. To smoothly organize and analyze the different data sets, analysts make use of business intelligence dashboards. But what are BI dashboards?

BI dashboards, also known as a business intelligence dashboard, is a data visualization tool that displays KPIs (key performance indicators) recorded by a company to assess various performance elements while delivering actionable insights. That being said, how do BI dashboards work? Well, dashboards combine and present information from multiple sources, including databases, locally stored files, and web services.

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE BEST PRACTICES AND TOOLS

To fully understand the business intelligence best practices, we should first acknowledge some tools used by analysts to accomplish their set tasks. BI tools are forms of application software that collect and handle vast amounts of unstructured data from different systems, such as; books, journals, documents, health records, photos, files, email, video, and other business sources.

BI dashboard tools aren’t static; they adapt to the demands of the individuals who create them by providing relevant metrics to their role, industry, or platform. Modern BI tools can access, analyze, display, and share data via web-based dashboards, rather than analysts manually assembling spreadsheets. Stakeholders can create dashboards to examine, draw conclusions, and take action using a powerful, automated business intelligence platform. BI tools include; Datapine, Microstrategy, SAP Business Intelligence, and so much more.

7 OF THE BEST BI DASHBOARD PRACTICES

To get the best out of your dashboards and reports, here are a couple of BI dashboard best practices. These practices are guaranteed to improve your business intelligence-driven organizational strategies significantly. To get an idea, seven (7) BI Dashboard best practices have been curated, and they include the following:

Determine What Reporting Requirements You Need

Why do you have to report, and to whom do you have to report? First, list all of the stakeholders and the decision-maker, and end-users who are involved. You’ll have a clearer and better sense of what will be on your dashboard once you’ve determined your target audience. After that, it will be much easier for you to choose from a list of KPIs, the ones that are best suited and appropriate for your target audience.

Determine How Many Widgets You Need

Between 7 and 10 widgets should be included in a business intelligence dashboard. For context, charts, graphs, line plots, maps, scatter plots, infographics, pie or bar charts, and word clouds are all examples of data visualization tools used as widgets. The most significant widget should be in the upper-left corner, as this is where the eye travels first.

Design data for proper communication

Fonts, colors, size, and other stylistic elements should all be changed to match the company’s identity for the dashboard’s title and labeling of the data points. To avoid any data misinterpretation, make sure these things are explicit and unambiguous while avoiding abbreviations.

Use Your Metrics to Tell a Story

Use storytelling to your advantage as a powerful best practice for any firm, regardless of industry or sector. A great story will not only hold your audience’s attention but will also break down your content in an inspiring and accessible manner. This strategy will lead to tremendous success in all areas. 

Use Data Visualizations That Are Appropriate

The visualization that best communicates your data isn’t always the most visually appealing. Therefore, it would be best if you considered the following circumstances when deciding on your data visualization.

• Relationship: Indicates the existence of a link between two or more variables.
• Comparison: It occurs when two or more variables are compared side by side.
• Composition: Variables are visualized in relation to the entire data set.
• Distribution: This shows how variables can be distributed.

Determine which type of visualization best suits your data. Again, it’s best to experiment with your BI tool to see which visualizations make the most sense in your situation. 

Set the scene

Users cannot understand the whole meaning of data without context, nor can they determine what kind of action they need to take or whether action is required at all. It’s simple to address these questions by including previous data. For example, make a list of important milestone dates or compare the figures to those from earlier periods (month, quarter, year) to see if any trends emerge.

Avoid Cluttering

Don’t cram too much data or visual features into a single dashboard to avoid overloading the visitor. Every widget on your dashboard should serve a specific purpose and have a particular location. Anything not necessary to the dashboard’s aim and the overall question should be removed.

BI DASHBOARD EXAMPLES

Organizations use various operational and analytical dashboards to aid decision-making at both the corporate and departmental levels. Widgets, or single units that represent one data category, are used in business intelligence dashboard examples. On the BI dashboard, all of these widgets are displayed together to present the business’s data story.

Here are some BI dashboard examples of different sorts of BI dashboards for various purposes, along with descriptions of what they feature and how they’re utilized.

• Customer Analysis Dashboard: For regional clients, the Customer Analysis Dashboard provides significant insight into product sales and profit. Managers and business executives may use this Power BI dashboard to analyze business growth across regions. What is a power bi dashboard, you might ask? Power BI dashboards are single-paged dashboards, also known as a canvas, that tell a story using visuals. They give managers the ability to assess profit distribution across consumers, make important revenue-boosting decisions, and enhance profitability. 

• HR Analytics Dashboard: The HR Analytics Dashboard gives you a bird’s eye perspective of your company’s human resource KPIs, such as employee turnover, statistics on the number of people counted, statistics on money, statistics on the population, and information about the employees. Organizations can use this dashboard to make essential decisions about staff productivity. So, what is the purpose of the dashboard? This Power BI dashboard gives you a look at headcount data. Managers can look at this tab to see what’s going on in scenarios such as:
  • Total Number of Employees.
  • Employees who are currently working and newcomers.
  • Rate of Attrition.
  • Employee Satisfaction Score.
  • Education, Salary, and Experience Attrition Rates.

• Executive Insights Dashboard: This Power BI intelligence dashboard provides insight into the health and performance of your company. Companies can use this dashboard to analyze and make decisions based on company-wide data. What are dashboards used for in this scenario? The Executive Insights dashboard allows businesses to see their business from various perspectives based on criteria such as products, year, country, and order type. 

BI DASHBOARD DESIGNS

So, what is a good BI dashboard design? A well-designed dashboard offers business insights drawn from data in an easy-to-understand format. The numerous components of a well-designed dashboard fluidly interlock with one another to produce data views that give end-users relevant information for decision-making and operational activities while also allowing them to drill down to examine more detailed data if necessary. 

A BI dashboard design combines charts and graphs on a single screen, giving the viewer a comprehensive view of the scenario under consideration. With the way dashboards keep being mentioned, it must be made clear what exactly they are and the purpose of dashboards. Dashboards are popular BI platform features because they present simple data analysis, allow you to personalize which information you want to see, and share your study results with others. Dashboard data visualization usually takes into consideration essential metrics and key data points to monitor specific processes. In dashboard design, there are three types of data visualizations:

• Tables
• Line graphs
• Bar graphs

WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF DASHBOARDS?

There are different types of dashboards, and they include:

• Operational Dashboards: Real-time or transactional data is monitored against important indicators and KPIs using an operational dashboard. Data on operating dashboards are updated regularly, sometimes even every minute. Operational dashboards are intended to be used in conjunction with your daily workflow. Contextual information is frequently included in operational dashboards so that users may investigate the data and apply it in decision-making.

• Strategic Dashboards: Executives utilize strategic dashboards to keep track of key performance indicators (KPIs). The data on the strategic dashboard is updated less frequently than the data on the operational dashboard. To help executives keep on top of organizational KPIs, strategic dashboards are designed to be seen once a day. Strategic dashboards are frequently used to summarize performance across time (month, quarter, year).

• Analytical Dashboards: Analytical dashboards are used to examine vast amounts of data. Users can utilize this information to look into trends, predict outcomes, discover insights, and set goals based on historical data. Traditionally, data analysts produced and built analytical dashboards. Still, the rise of no-code or low-code analytics solutions like PowerMetrics has provided everyone with the tools and resources needed to create an analytical dashboard, from marketers to founders and executives.

DASHBOARD VS REPORT

Business intelligence relies heavily on dashboards and reports. Although the names may appear to be equivalent, there are a few key differences between the two. Dashboards are helpful for stakeholders who want to see the performance at a glance. Reports are for more information and who want to slice and dice data to find new insights.

That being said, there are certain and clear similarities between dashboards and reports. Dashboards and reports can be used in tandem to provide a holistic view of trends and insights. Let’s start with the commonalities. Both dashboards and reports:

• Include historical information
• Combine several metrics

The following are the areas where the differences exist:

• Dashboards are interactive with live, dynamically updated data letting users interact with the data and conduct their studies. In contrast, reports are static, providing detail but requiring the end-user to draw insights from data collection.
• Reports disseminate information about well-known areas of interest or objectives.
• Dashboards keep track of known areas of interest or objectives.

CONCLUSION

BI dashboards aid users in comprehending complex information. They are also a fantastic innovation of the 21st century as analysts can use BI to provide performance and competitive benchmarks, which will help the company run more smoothly and efficiently. To stay up to date on business intelligence trends and concepts, you should not forget to subscribe. Also, you can share this post far and wide for others to know more about business intelligence dashboards.