As businesses become more analytical and data-driven, CXOs responsible for the growth and health of those businesses need access to data and trends about markets, operations, and other key performance metrics. That way, they can spend time making decisions, not just interpreting the data. Business dashboards combine the power of data visualization and analytics and help CXOs develop powerful insights from the most critical parameters for their businesses.
What is a business dashboard?
CXOs face a specific set of challenges, and their work often involves making critical decisions quickly, based on complex data with potentially catastrophic consequences for the wrong choices.
Take the example of airline cockpits equipped with displays that interpret data from dozens of sophisticated instruments. Like pilots, who must watch the cockpit instrument panel displays and make crucial decisions, CXOs in modern companies need to analyze dozens of business KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to make accurate, data-driven decisions.
In general, a CXO needs data on those performance parameters which are most critical for the company’s goals—updated to-the-minute data, presented in an intuitive form (which generally means visually descriptive). Just like cockpit panels, they must be easy to digest at a glance to enable rapid decision-making. This brings us to the presentation layer, which is the most essential aspect of a business dashboard.
Business dashboards are user interfaces that present frequently tracked business intelligence data via visualizations in the form of charts, graphs, tables, and other reporting formats.
Why CXOs Need Data Visualization Dashboards
Unlike airline cockpits, modern Business Intelligence continues to be delivered in formats that require the CXO to be a power user in spreadsheets or a computer scientist!
In other words, there is a gap between the available data and the decision maker’s area of expertise. This gap is in the way the data is presented.
A business dashboard solves this problem by presenting the data in an easy to read, visually appealing format. Furthermore, the data visualization and analysis make it universally readable. For instance, a COO may need to track production cost comparisons of various locations and resources, while a CEO may be more interested in ROIs of various initiatives, the overall profitability, etc. Similarly, other CXOs, including CHROs, CFOs, CMOs, CBOs, and CTOs may need to track trends and data related to different parts of the business.
A good business intelligence tool will generate sufficient data to generate insights for all possible parameters, but a great business dashboard should be able to use the same data set to create unique dashboards for each CXO, allowing every leader to make the best decisions regarding the company’s operations, growth, market relationships, and future strategy.
Data Visualization and Analytics Trends
Business Intelligence is now an important component in the decision-making process of CXOs across diverse industries—from private equity firms to healthcare. As BI data consumption has grown across industries and functions, the way BI is consumed has evolved. BI is now available in smarter, more accessible, and integrated ways, as well as easy-to-consume dashboards. These dashboards include integrated advanced analytics techniques, AI & ML capabilities within the BI engines. The trend now is to further integrate the BI functionality with existing business and personal productivity software to democratize BI and make it central to the way business decisions are made. As usual, well-designed dashboards are necessary to display the generated BI in easy-to-consume formats.
For instance, in the hospital healthcare sector, previously siloed information across departments can be integrated smartly into central dashboards accessible to doctors and hospital administrators with drill-downs available to the resource, patient, and department levels. These dashboards provide data and trends on important hospital KPIs like average patient stay and satisfaction rate, insurance payer statistics, equipment, doctor availability, treatment methodologies, etc. The result is better planning to improve resource utilization while streamlining operational efficiency and future growth strategy.
Financial services companies like banks, private equity firms, and credit card services use data analytics and AI in multiple ways. On the one hand, powerful analytics-based dashboards help retail and institutional customers better understand and control their portfolios. On the other hand, companies create powerful operational insights by tracking and analyzing multiple KPIs like proprietary ratios, cash cycles, profitability metrics, etc.
Whatever the industry may be, adopting BI and business dashboards in the company’s decision-making echelons is only the first step.
Smart BI systems should be built from the ground up, with disciplined data collection, quality data management, and data discovery built into the workflow.
When you are ready to begin transforming your company’s decision-making process, start with an experienced team led by an expert who knows how to set up efficient business intelligence operations to deliver business impact. Or else, consult with a business intelligence expert at InsightOut.
InsightOut helps companies devise every stage of their data-driven strategy, from data consolidation to decision support. The result is a fast, cost-effective, plug-and-play business dashboard solution that lets you focus on leveraging business intelligence, not just struggling to manage it.
Get in touch with us for a free demo to understand how InsightOut simplifies end-to-end data management and how the platform enables data intelligence with actionable insights and intuitive visualization.