Advice on Business Intelligence Dashboards

Here is a list of considerations to keep in mind when evaluating dashboards. First off, the purpose of the dashboard is vitally important. The main purpose of the dashboard is to meet the specific business requirements. Sometimes companies require operational dashboards to help manage call centers, while other businesses use dashboards to evaluate overall performance indicators and keep track of any potential metrics that can cause a decline in performance.

Secondly, a company must take into account its current business intelligence environment to create a strategic dashboard that is easy to use and provides all of the accurate data needed to make business decisions. It must easily integrate a variety of data sources that provide key performance indicators. This basically means that some dashboard solutions may not necessarily have the capability to provide data on the dashboard given their current IT environment.

Another aspect to keep in mind while evaluating dashboards for business intelligence is that not all dashboards are created equal and sometimes important information cannot be gathered onto the dashboard which causes a major hindrance to gathering and evaluating useful data. For example, certain data sources cannot be placed into a flow chart and other times specific data pieces cannot be separated into different diagrams. The most important point to take from all of this is that every company needs to evaluate what types of data is most useful to them and check to see that it is functional with their prospective or current dashboard to gain the proper insights needed to make powerful decision making.

The final thing to keep in mind while searching for the dashboard that will provide the most value to your organization is to be aware of the different types of individuals in your company who will be utilizing the dashboard. Certain companies allow certain employees to create their own mash ups of data based on the task and roles needed to complete projects while other companies want to see a uniform pattern of data on the dashboard that is universally used throughout the company. All of these points are vital to generate the best possible insights from dashboard business intelligence data.