Dashboard Design – Transforming Data into Business Intelligence5 min read

Whether it’s a one-man show, a small team, or a huge organization, a business intelligence dashboard with the right dashboard design is a great way to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and other important metrics that show how your business is doing. A dashboard is an integral part of any business intelligence solution, and it’s used to deliver accurate and well-organised information.

They’re sometimes referred to as business or data dashboards, but generally, they serve to present all important data visualisations. These give us an interactively designed overview of how our marketing strategy works for your business and what we should focus on.

 

What is Business Intelligence and What Does It Have to Do With Dashboard Designs?

In theory, business intelligence as a principle is about combining all the data and infrastructure to help a business make data-driven decisions and grow. In practice, you need a comprehensive view of all the data that pertains to your business and organization, with minimal distractions if any, and you need a way to use that to eliminate any inefficiencies and adapt to the market.

Business intelligence, again as a principle, is far from new – businesses have been exchanging data and information for quite some time, but from our experience in recent years, it has evolved into a critical element for any business and one every business must focus on. Today, it’s not just one thing, but rather a whole combination of methods and processes that all come together to optimize the way your business runs and makes its income.

As part of business intelligence, you have various processes that help improve your business, and some of them include data mining, descriptive analytics, statistical analysis, visual analysis, data preparation and visualization with charts, and then some. All of them are important, and skipping one means that you’re potentially skipping a key metric, even though you might think it has only minimal impact. In today’s business landscape, that’s not something you want, so you should instead stick to the principle that gets you success.

By analysing both present and past data, your business can make better decisions. You can get insights into your performance, as well as your competition, and you can see where you can do better and be more efficient. If you use business intelligence information effectively, you’ll be helping your business in a variety of ways.

So, how does business intelligence relate to dashboard design? Well, in our experience, an effective, simple dashboard design that’s been designed with charts and graphs and minimal distractions is the best way to get all your information in one place.

 

Why Do We Use a Dashboard UI?

The main goal when using an analytic dashboard for business intelligence is to have all the data about your business in one place. This allows us to focus, and be able to quickly and efficiently see how campaigns are progressing without the need to rush across different analytic tools. This way, everything is in one place and we can see the big picture more efficiently.

Tracking Crucial KPIs

Arguably, the main aspect of a business intelligence dashboard design is to be able to track all key performance indicators that show us how your business is doing, without the need for multiple tools that just complicate things. The best thing about it is that it works with various tools – Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Zapier, Stripe, and various other data tracking tools. Whether you’re looking at charts or graphs, it’s the information that matters.

The all-in-one integration allows for two things. One is the ability to get faster access to key data because you don’t need to log on to dozens of tools. And two, the ability to identify trends and make real-time adjustments, as you have everything in one place and we can easily see how some of the decisions impact your business.

In addition to this, we use analytic dashboards to set up goals in a way that allows us to keep track of them – how successful they are, will they be achieved within the set time, and whether or not any adjustments are necessary.

Customized Dashboard Ideas

No two businesses are the same, and in this case, different businesses usually require that you track different metrics. We tailor each dashboard to the exact data we need to keep track of for every business, according to what’s most important in every scenario. To add to this, our dashboards are organized in a way that lets us track and compare performance to past performance and future goals.

We find that this kind of visualization gives us an easy way of keeping up with everything without it being just a bunch of numbers. It’s easier to understand and gives us a better visual overview allowing us to connect metrics. The best dashboard design is the one that works for your business – and we adjust them accordingly.

Business Intelligence is About More Than Just Data

The principle of effective business intelligence isn’t just about collecting and having designed dashboards with charts and metrics and minimal distractions (if any). It allows you to learn about your customers, their buying habits and patterns, and then transfer that information into a tailored buying experience to boost sales. It allows you to obtain better control over your business processes because you have an active overview of every process and procedure, and you can deal with any issue that could arise, very quickly. It allows you to back any important business decision – something that might not be possible with traditional reporting. Not only do you get valuable insights into everything that’s going on with your business, but you also get that in real-time, which is incredibly important in some situations.  

And when you sum everything up with the right business intelligence dashboard design, you’re getting a competitive advantage that few other things can get you. You get analytic insight into what’s happening with your business, but also what the competition is doing. Ultimately, you can use that experience to your advantage to see where you should put your focus to improve your business!

Contact us to find out how we can get BI data dashboards set up for your business.