Corporate Dashboard: the solution to simply monitor your data
Let’s start with an apparently trivial question: how is your company doing?
Entrepreneurs and managers normally have a perception of the company’s general performance but, they often rely on PARTIAL, DELAYED and DESTRUCTURED data that communicate far less than they should.
Data is an asset that is too often neglected in companies because it is not clear enough which the ‘vital parameters’ to monitor are and, above all, THERE AREN’T THE RIGHT TOOLS TO DO SO.
We live in the ‘Big Data’ era.
Every minimally structured business can count on an immense volume of information: production data, sales, costs, customers, but also input generated by objects connected on the Internet of Things (IoT) and social network activities.
The real challenge now is to be able to analyse data in search of valuable information and this is where Business Intelligence comes in.
By Business Intelligence or BI, we refer to a set of techniques and tools designed to acquire raw data and transform them into useful and meaningful information to support strategic decisions.
Case Study BI: ADAlytics. Discover
Corporate dashboard
Among the many applications of BI, the most important tool that every company should have is definitely a dashboard.
This word inevitably leads us to think about what we see behind the wheel while driving:
a control panel that translates the data it receives into a visual form made up of simple and clear indicators.
But how do we get to the construction of a Dashboard?
We can identify a sequence of steps to follow:
- Identify what the purpose of the dashboard will be: monitoring on costs, revenues and progress of activities, an analysis on individual projects or specific areas?
- Think about who will consult it and make this technology a daily work tool, including which devices they will need to access it. A trader, for example, will need to consult data and graphs from a smartphone more often than a manager sitting at a desk, while a warehouse worker may want to use a tablet.
- Choose the performance indicators to track, the ‘vital parameters’ known as KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that need to be aligned with the strategic objectives to be achieved.
- Identify which IT solution would best suit your needs and then how to implement your Dashboard in practice.
- Select and link sources. In order for the process of data collection, analysis and visualisation to be carried out automatically or almost automatically, the Dashboard must be set up with a number of actions.
- Verify data normalisation. Raw data, once acquired, must be cleaned, standardised, cross-referenced and reorganised correctly in order to be absolutely reliable.
- Define values (e.g. a minimum and a maximum index in KPIs) and time parameters (for punctual monitoring, real time or diachronic comparisons) for extractions.
- Identify the best visual representations to set up within the Dashboard. Depending on the KPIs, the ideal appearance of the representation changes. Designing the easiest and most effective form for you to consult means making the analysis work faster.
In conclusion
Through data you can understand the reasons for success or failure, find new opportunities, optimise operations, anticipate trends and much more.
To give it up is to set yourself up to lose ground to the competition.
Too much data, however, leads to confusion and dispersion.
The adoption of a tailor-made Dashboard synthesises the ‘knowledge’ deriving from data in a single, rational, orderly and user-friendly place.
It offers, at a glance, up-to-date information with fresh data, but also provides the ‘history’, as they say, and a broad view of the company’s performance.
It is flexible and can transform over time as it evolves and grows with you and your goals.
No more without a dashboard!