5 Ways They Make Your Business Better

Have you ever tried driving your car forward while only looking in the rearview mirror? 

If you’re like most people, chances are you haven’t. After all, the most likely outcome of this kind of driving is a car accident. 

However, that’s exactly what most businesses are doing – driving their businesses forward by only looking in the rearview mirror. 

What I’m trying to explain here is that businesses are analyzing historical data (rearview mirror) and making decisions (driving) based on past events. What they should be doing instead is focus on real-time data. 

Analyzing real-time data gives you an opportunity to spot trends and patterns as they’re happening. This allows you to capitalize on positive changes and course-change on any negative changes. 

So, how do you analyze data in real-time and make decisions based on what is happening in the present? 

Simple. Data dashboards. 

Data dashboards are tools businesses use to organize and visually track, analyze, and display data in real-time, such as various key performance indicators (KPIs), to help you gain insights into your business’s overall performance. 

In this article, we’ll explain why data dashboards are important for your business and how they can help your business improve performance. 

Let’s go ahead.

• What is all the fuss about data dashboards? 
• Why data dashboards pay off
• Do I need a data dashboard for my business? 
• 5 ways data dashboards can help your business improve performance
• Need help? 

What is all the fuss about data dashboards? 

As businesses generate more and more data, business owners can use this data to make smarter decisions and improve bottom-line results. 

But looking at raw data in an excel sheet is difficult. We are visual beings and we learn better through visuals. 

Data dashboards provide a powerful way to transform raw data into data visualizations and help us gain valuable insights from our data. 

Think of a data dashboard like a dashboard in your car. 

Your car dashboard displays important information about your car’s performance that helps you make safe driving decisions and prevent serious damage to your car. 

On the other hand, data dashboards display your business’s most important information to help you make better decisions and avoid making costly mistakes. 

So, data dashboards are indispensable. 

But do they pay off? 

Why data dashboards pay off

Experts say businesses that are highly effective at using data dashboards outperform businesses that are not. 

According to a new study from MIT, companies that have the most experience using data dashboards and data visualization tools generate more profit than companies with less experience. 

Additionally, studying over one thousand companies, MIT study finds that businesses that are more effective at data dashboards are also better at other important measures, such as innovation, growth, and margin relative to industry.

“There are lots of reasons why dashboarding is so effective,” study reports. “But perhaps the most important is that everybody in the company gets to see how it is doing against agreed-upon metrics and works together to make course corrections when necessary.” 

So, data dashboards pay off. 

But do you need them in your business?

Do I need a data dashboard for my business? 

Revenue. Conversion rates on different ad networks. Engagement on social media. Visualizing these metrics in a data dashboard allows you to identify relationships, trends, and patterns in your business. This way you gain control and ability to adjust your strategies based on positive and negative outcomes. 

Whether you’re tackling your website’s performance or website traffic from different social channels, your dashboard can tell a story of what’s working, what needs attention, and where you need to reevaluate. 

Being able to monitor, track, analyze, and share your efforts on a well designed data dashboard elevates your business. 

Having a data dashboard that’s integrated with your business gives you an edge compared to your competitors. 

5 ways data dashboards can help your business improve performance

Dashboards provide a quick and easy way to start improving your business right away. The following is a list ways data dashboards can help improve your business:

Better understand data through visualization

Our brains are wired for visualization. That’s why we have the ability to quickly differentiate a square from a circle, white from black, and so on. 

In order to make sense of your data, you need to visualize it. Data visualization enables you to quickly scan a graph or a chart and discover patterns, trends, and outliers. 

Data dashboards neatly pack multiple data visualizations and empower you to understand and leverage business insights to make more informed decisions. 

Track performance

Probably the most effective point of data dashboards is their capacity to display multiple metrics and KPIs at the same time in one centralized location. 

For example, you can build a sales dashboard that displays metrics such as year-over-year sales performance, sales by segment, sales by location, and product category sales. 

Having multiple, related KPIs in one place allows you to track progress effectively and make changes in your business strategy as needed. 

Real-time analytics

Dashboards often use real-time data, meaning they are automatically updated with the most current data available. 

If you notice something new as it happens, positive or negative, you get the opportunity to immediately change your actions if needed – even get ahead of emerging trends. 

Real-time data dashboards are essential for sales, marketing, and inventory teams who monitor hourly and daily performance data.  

Save time 

Dashboards are huge time-savers because they have the capacity to be automated and streamlined to process vast amounts of data. 

With real-time data dashboards, you don’t have to worry about having to manually wrangle data or access multiple sources or spreadsheets to retrieve your data. Dashboards do all the heavy lifting for you. 

Forecast

Data dashboards can help you analyze data to understand trajectory, create sales forecasts, anticipate change within markets, notice emerging business trends, and help departments choose the right path towards meeting their goals.

Need Help? 

Now that you understand how imperative data dashboards are for your business, I’m sure you can’t wait to get started. The great news is that you’re one call away from making use of data dashboards.