The goal of a digital dashboard is to provide actionable
information based on past data which predicts future performance, allowing for
effective decision-making. There are certainly other avenues of data analysis
aside from dashboards which have the same goal, but the advantage of a
dashboard is that it is easy to use, provides timely data and, most
importantly, gives an idea as to how to go about implementing potential
improvements and solutions.
Figure 3: Dashboard represented in Excel
In Figure 3 above, a typical dashboard created in Microsoft Excel
is displayed. While this dashboard has most of the desired information
displayed, it is not in a useful form. Figure 4 below is the same data
represented in a .NET digital dashboard.
Figure 4: Dashboard represented in a .NET
application
The dashboard in Figure 4 is more useful than the dashboard
in Figure 3 because it displays information in an easier to absorb format.
Furthermore, all information relating to sales and revenue is also readily
available within the same application.
Consider the following scenario: Over the past several
months a company has been engaged in strong marketing campaigns, and as such,
revenue has increased. The supplied chart of this situation looks akin to
Figure 5 below:
Figure 5: Simple chart of Revenue vs. Marketing
While this chart quickly identifies that the sales are doing
well with increased marketing expenditures, it does not identify why. Where is
the marketing money going, and what specifically has been increasing sales? The
answer to these questions is not clear from this one chart, so more information
is needed. Of course, there are means of finding this information and deciding
what the best way to display it is, but a dashboard provides this data in an
easy to read form with all relative information consolidated in one place. The
decision of what is important has already been thought of, so you just need to
look at the visualizations.
Figure 6: Example dashboard of Marketing Campaign
In Figure 6, after only a few moments of observation, it is
obvious that web banners have obtained the highest marketing funding, and that
nearly 30% of all visits to the companies’ webpage come from banner
advisements. Furthermore, while ABC Coders has the highest hit rate, The Code
House has the highest click-through rate. This information has been presented
in multiple forms which best represent the data. These assortments of
visualizations provide the advantage of clarity, something not easily
achievable with other avenues of data analysis. Figure 6 both answers the questions
raised by Figure 5 and provides a clear picture of the marketing campaign.
The ability of a dashboard to display different data in
multiple forms is one of the main benefits of using a digital dashboard. The
components used when creating a digital dashboard include charts, gauges, maps,
diagrams, tables and scorecards. While the question of which tool to use for
what type of data should be considered when developing a dashboard, digital
dashboards provide the advantage of being able to dynamically change the data
visualization on request so that data can be viewed from multiple perspectives.
A digital dashboard also has the advantage of having all
different types of related data consolidated into one place. For example, in
Figure 6 it would be very simple to add drill-down functionality to allow the
user to click on a point within a chart and find out more information about the
selected item. This kind of in-depth data analysis greatly assists the user in
finding causes of performance anomalies. Adding this functionality to a
dashboard is both easy to implement by the developer, and easy to use for the
end user.
