How Actionable BI Dashboards Improve Organizational Outcomes

As a leader, your organization relies on YOU to make sound decisions that support employees, customers, and, ultimately, the company’s performance goals. Of course, this is no simple task. Like many of today’s decision-makers, you may find yourself in a tough position when it comes to gathering and activating business intelligence (BI):

• You’re overwhelmed with vast amounts of data presented 
• You’re confused with reports as the data lacks any context 
• You struggle to quickly convert raw data into insights   

It’s time to evolve past these traditional ways of reporting that just throw metrics in your face for you to interpret. The future of BI is decision-centric dashboards that give you smarter insights faster for better decisions that drive business success. 

Decision-Centric Dashboards Explained

Far more sophisticated than traditional tools that just show performance or activity data (typically as a spreadsheet report), decision-centric dashboards include context around your data through visualizations and granular insights. These dashboards help users quickly make informed decisions through some basic features: 

• Key Performance Indicator (KPI) analysis: Users can monitor performance for metrics relevant to their role, such as revenue, manufacturing efficiency, or insurance claims data, to spot trends, patterns, or anomalies. 
• Visualization: Users can view their data as a visual chart or graph to quickly find trends or patterns that could lead to potential opportunities.
• Drill-down functions: Users can interact with the dashboard to find more granular insights on summary reports. For example, take a sales report that shows the total revenue generated for the year, then click further to see a breakdown of the revenue by month, customer profile, or product line. 
• Real-time data reporting: Dashboards continuously update as their data sources, such as CRMs, ERPs, or other information systems, generate or update data records.  
• Dashboard customization: Through self-service tools, users can select which metrics they want to track, choose data visualization options, and set up tailored notifications that meet their BI objectives.  

Decision-centric dashboards are interactive by nature. They allow companies to boost BI initiatives with more flexible reporting that aligns with the user’s specific goals and context that helps leaders better understand their data. 

Why Decision-Centric Dashboards

Whether you’re using it for sales, customer service, manufacturing, product development, or any other function, decision-centric dashboards can revolutionize how you do BI at your company. Here are some of the perks: 

• Reporting is supplemented with visualizations and granular insights — letting businesses activate their data faster to get ahead of the competition.
• Users can customize and interact with their dashboard for reporting flexibility to meet any business need or objective. 
• BI insights are backed with data (often super granular), not emotions or high-level information, for better decision-making capabilities.  

In an era where smart insights are everything, decision-centric dashboards are the catalyst that lets businesses succeed while staying ahead of the curve. 

Tricks of the Trade: How to Maximize BI with Decision-Centric Dashboards

As you begin your journey to adopting decision-focused dashboard tools, remember to use these best practices to ensure you get reliable BI that can maximize your performance potential. 

First, tailor your dashboards accordingly with the right KPIs and data sources. If you’re an IT director, for example, you don’t need to overwhelm yourself with sales or accounting data. Stick strictly to data sources, such as an IT Service Management System or network monitoring tool, that lets you find insights relevant to your position. 

Next, give yourself unparalleled visibility with an intuitive dashboard design. As the decision maker, you’re the primary person who needs to understand and interpret their data. Only use data visualizations you’re comfortable with to easily spot new opportunities that enhance your operation.    

Finally, while you might be excited to launch your new dashboard and impress your C-Suite colleagues with new ideas, remember the impact insufficient data (out-of-date, duplicated, etc) can have on decisions. Make sure your organization has a robust data governance policy that ensures up-to-date, accurate, and quality information is stored in your sources and, in turn, presented on your dashboard.   

Dan Columbus

Dan is the Director of Enterprise Sales focusing on BI and data-analytics products. Dan holds a BS in engineering from Penn State and has used it for a career in technical selling and management. He is always seeking the “win-win” deal and enjoys working with clients to help them achieve their goals. When he isn’t working with data clients, he spends time with his family and enjoys traveling to new places with them. Dan also enjoys art, architecture, and loves to compete in poker tournaments. You can connect with Dan on LinkedIn.