Data Dashboards: Benefits, Types, and Examples

Data dashboards are valuable tools that help you get the most out of the data you collect. To better understand trends, identify bottlenecks, and find opportunities to streamline processes, it’s important to invest in a data dashboard platform. Here’s everything you need to know about types of data dashboards, how they benefit your company, how to create an effective dashboard, and how to find the right data dashboard software for your organization.

What is a data dashboard?

A data dashboard is a summary of data drawn from multiple places and formatted in an easy-to-understand way. The question “What is a data dashboard?” might seem simple, but there are so many different types of data and different ways you can set up a dashboard that there’s not a single right way to define or create one. You can include many different types of data, track a variety of metrics, visualize the data using different charts and graphs, and have many other unique features in your data dashboard. 

Generally, though, a data dashboard’s main use is to tell a story quickly to the users so the users can better understand the data and make informed decisions.

Benefits of using data dashboards

Data dashboards offer many benefits at several levels. They can be beneficial to individual employees, teams, executives, entire companies, and even to whole industries. Some of the common benefits of using data dashboards include:

• Enhanced decision-making and strategic planning. Dashboards offer high-level views of what’s happening in the organization and help users recognize trends in the numbers they wouldn’t have otherwise seen. Real-time data from dashboards helps teams make choices based on up-to-date information. 
• Real-time monitoring and tracking of key metrics. With dashboards, you’ll always have the most up-to-date information. This helps you know what your pipelines look like, have an accurate idea of what trends are taking place, and make decisions on the most recent information. 
• Better anticipating the future. By analyzing past trends, your dashboards can use predictive analytics to forecast the future. The better your dashboard, the more accurately you can prepare for future trends, make proactive changes to your business, and gain a competitive advantage. 
• Improved data visualization and insights. Dashboards don’t just serve up numbers—they help you understand them, too. Visualizations and insights help you find patterns and correlations you otherwise might have missed. Visualizations also help you understand trends so you can understand your products and customers more thoroughly. Visualizations of data are important because of the picture-superiority effect, which refers to the fact that people tend to remember images better than numbers or words. So data dashboards don’t just help people understand data better, they help people remember that data longer too.  
• Understand complex data better. As anyone who has ever taken a statistics class knows, data sets can be tricky to understand. There’s not always a clear trend. It can be difficult to understand why a dataset is behaving the way it is, or how different variables are affecting each other. Dashboards can summarize massive quantities of data to help you identify patterns and understand what is and isn’t working for your business.  
• Increase data literacy. Big data repositories aren’t known for being user-friendly. However, dashboards offer visuals that are easy to understand for everyone in your organization. You don’t have to be an expert in SQL or Python to use a dashboard. Data dashboards help everyone, regardless of their previous experience, become familiar with data. Everyone can better understand where the company is at in reaching their goals, how their role contributes to larger projects, and find efficiencies to do their job faster.

5 Types of Data Dashboards

You can create as many data dashboards as you want. Each one can serve a unique purpose. Whether you’re making one about a company-wide initiative that will be visible to everyone in the organization or you’re making a personal one about a single project, your dashboard can be personalized to your goals. Your dashboard data should reflect only the numbers that matter and shouldn’t be cluttered with metrics that aren’t relevant to what you’re searching for. Here are some of the many types of data dashboards you can create:

Operational dashboards are essentially your newspaper report for the day. They give real-time updates on how certain metrics are performing. The dashboard data centers around the performance of your day-to-day operations and provides an overview of measurable goals. The data in operational dashboards is usually granular and specific to small teams or projects. 

Analytical dashboards are designed to tell more of a story. They’re less about the “what” and more about the “why.” Based on data from multiple sources, analytical dashboards compare multiple variables to find trends, uncover patterns, and connect cause and effect. For example, analytical dashboards for digital marketing don’t just tell you how much money you’ve made so far; rather, they analyze customer demographics, help you identify commonalities that made certain campaigns successful, and suggest ways to improve your next campaign. 

Strategic dashboards tend to be high-level and long-term. They focus on larger goals or initiatives within the company and show historical trends in the data. As the project progresses, strategic dashboards help monitor how well the project is going, how close you are to meeting milestones, what kinds of resources the project has taken so far, and what a predicted finish time or revenue might look like. 

Tactical dashboards are more specific than strategic dashboards. Tactical dashboards are usually focused on specific business units or departments. They serve as a connecting middle ground between strategic dashboards and operational dashboards because they implement the initiatives that the strategies suggest while still benign higher-level than most operational dashboards. 

Executive dashboards are dashboards that curate data specifically to help executives make strategic decisions. These high-level dashboards combine data from all departments to give a summary of what’s happening in the organization. Usually, the dashboard data includes a focus on sales and pipeline and has a hefty predictive analytics component to help executives make decisions and plan for the future. They also typically include many visuals, as their purpose is to tell a story and help synthesize data into actionable insights.

How to Create an Effective Data Dashboard

Dashboards are supposed to help you understand data better—but if your dashboard is poorly designed, it can have the opposite effect and cause confusion. Here are some tips for creating an effective data dashboard that helps you understand your data quickly and easily. 

• Have a specific purpose in mind. Only make a new dashboard if you have a specific need you’re trying to fill. This will help prevent you from making unnecessary dashboards so you don’t get confused which one you need to look at. Having a specific use case for a dashboard also helps you identify which information you’ll need to import. 
• Identify relevant KPIs and metrics. This is harder than it sounds. You want to include all the information you need to give you a holistic view of your goal while not cluttering the dashboard. If you have more data than you can easily fit on your dashboard, consider implementing filters or creating a second dashboard. Identifying the right KPIs will help you get an accurate visualization of the trends you need to be aware of. 
• Choose the right dashboard type. As mentioned above, there are several different types of dashboards. Choosing the right type will help guide you toward the metrics you need and offer information that’s more useful for the goals you’re trying to achieve. 
• Give context wherever possible. Numbers can be confusing when they’re isolated. To get more insights out of your dashboard data, try to include context wherever possible. This can look like having comparisons of this month’s data and last month’s data, or this month’s data compared to the same month last year. It can also look like comparing costs to expected value or measuring current revenue against a company revenue goal. This context helps you understand quickly what the numbers mean in a real, practical sense. 
• Show all filters. Filters are a great way to keep your information as relevant and concise as possible. It helps you clear out any data that isn’t directly related to what you’re looking for. It’s also a good way to compare data sets and see how certain variables affect each other. 
• Design a user-friendly and intuitive dashboard layout. Dashboards should give you at-a-glance insights with their visuals. You shouldn’t have to be a data analyst or a SQL whiz to understand what story the dashboard is telling you. The more user-friendly and intuitive the dashboard is, the better your team will understand their goals. A simpler user interface also encourages higher data literacy, more participation from more team members, and invites playful interactivity with the numbers. 
• Choose colors intentionally. Use consistent color palettes for your dashboard to indicate different data sets. Remember that some people may be color-blind or have other cultural color inferences (such as red indicating something is wrong). Intentional color design can make your dashboard cohesive and draw attention to the right metrics and create flow between numbers.

Data Dashboard Examples and Use Cases

Data dashboards are useful for every person and every department in your organization. Here are just a few use cases that are common. If any of these examples haven’t been implemented in your organization yet, you might want to see if those teams are interested in creating dashboards, because everyone benefits from understanding their job more in depth. Here are some of the most common use cases for dashboards:

• Tracking sales. With sales, as with most goals, it’s helpful to identify your KPIs. Data dashboards can track the KPIs that are most important to you, such as the number of units sold, customer lifetime value, sales cycle length, win rate, and churn rate. When data gives you these insights, you can boost your sales performance and work toward continuous improvement goals. 
• Measuring project completion. Data dashboards can help show the progress of a project and which milestones have been completed, and they can also offer insights into what is making a project successful or what is holding it back. Project data dashboard can include KPIs such as resource utilization, time tracking, budget spent, hours per task, risks and contingencies, and deliverables that have and haven’t been done. This can help you identify where the underlying challenges are slowing down projects so you can complete projects on time and within budget. 
• Bringing data to non-technical teams. Dashboards are commonly used for groups like sales teams, data analysts, and finance managers. However, an increasingly important use case for data dashboards is for the non-technical teams, such as HR. Data can help HR teams know which employee benefits are most valued and used, what types of compensation and recognition are most meaningful, identify teams or departments in the organization that have unusually high complaints or turnover rates, and which managers may need extra training.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Data Dashboard Design

Setting up a dashboard is as easy as importing data. However, the actual design can be a bit tricky and has a bit of an art to it. Here are some common mistakes to avoid in data dashboard design so your dashboards are visually appealing, easy to understand, and easy to maintain. 

Mistake #1: Making your dashboard too cluttered. 

The purpose of a data dashboard is to help you understand your data better, and if it’s cluttered with too many metrics, then your dashboard is doing the opposite of its intended goal. Having too many visuals can be confusing and can distract from what the dashboard was created to show. 

If you have too much data stuffed into your dashboard, consider making a filter that can pare down which data is shown, or consider deleting some of the metrics. Sometimes certain special effects can make dashboards look more cluttered than they actually are, so avoid 3D charts and graphs and other visuals that are more complicated than necessary. 

Mistake #2: Creating a dashboard without a specific audience in mind.

If you don’t know who your audience is, you can’t effectively put together a dashboard. Knowing your audience helps you tailor your dashboard with relevant information and no fluff. 

If you’re making a dashboard to present to executives, you should keep the data high-level and only include metrics they’ll deem important. If you’re making a dashboard for the chief financial officer (CFO) or other financial executives, they’ll likely only care about metrics like expenses, pipeline, and revenue and won’t be interested in the more granular factors that contribute to those overall metrics like the completion rates of individual projects. Audiences who don’t have much experience with data won’t resonate with a dashboard filled with query downtime statistics; they’ll want to see metrics they understand and that are relevant to their role. 

Mistake #3: Not using information hierarchy principles. 

Information hierarchy is the strategy of organizing information in a way that prioritizes the most important information. It’s a way of laying out data in a way that’s easy to understand and naturally draws your eye to what you want to emphasize. 

Cut down on clutter and make your dashboard easier to understand by using information hierarchy principles, such as contrasting colors, consistent fonts, “Z” and “F” pattern texts and more. 

Mistake #4: Neglecting data accuracy and quality assurance. 

Your dashboard data won’t do you any good if the data isn’t accurate. It’s essential to make sure your dashboard data is accurate. 

You can help ensure the integrity of your data by automating data pipelines so there’s less chance of human error. Only use data sources that you know are reliable, and you’ll want to validate the data regularly to make sure it’s coming through correctly. 

Mistake #5: Failing to align the dashboard with business goals. 

If you’re fascinated by metrics, we hear you! We love that you are interested in playing around with data. 

However, if you make a dashboard dedicated to a project that doesn’t directly align with business goals, you’re spending your time on something that doesn’t contribute to what your company has deemed important. Dashboards that don’t support business goals can distract you from what you should be working on and can cause confusion among team members about what they should be working on.

Choosing the Right Data Dashboard Software

There are a lot of data dashboard software options out there. With so many choices, here is some guidance on how to choose the right data dashboard software for your business. 

• Think about integration capabilities.
  A good data dashboard should integrate with your existing data systems so you can easily import data. The tool should integrate seamlessly with your databases, applications, and APIs. When you think about integrations, you’ll also want to think about exporting data, not just importing it. What kinds of reports are you wanting your data dashboard software to make?
  
• Prioritize user experience.
  The better the user experience, the faster you’ll be able to onboard everyone, and the more use they’ll get out of the platform. When thinking about the user experience, you’ll want to know which teams will be using the platform. The user experience needs for technical data analysts will be different than the user experience needs for those with a creative background.
  
• Decide how much customization you’ll need.
  If your company’s needs are highly specific or differ from similar companies in your industry, you may need a software tool that is highly customizable. However, keep in mind that the more customized your tool is, the harder it will be to maintain and scale.
  
• Keep collaboration in mind.
  As you consider who in your organization will be using the data dashboard software, you should also think about collaboration features. Dashboards are designed to help individuals, teams, and departments have a single source of truth for data, and so everyone that needs access to that data needs to be able to use and collaborate within the tool. If you plan to roll out the software to more teams in the future, you’ll also want to know the scalability of the software.
• Know the practical ins and outs.
  Of course, there are also the very practical matters of performance and budget. The cost of the tool will need to be within your budget. Ask the software sales reps how the pricing of the software is structured (one-time installation fee, individual licenses, etc.). You’ll also want to estimate the expected value you’ll get out of the data dashboard software, which will help you determine how much you’re willing to spend on it. Performance is another practical aspect. If the tool has a reputation for crashing when processing large amounts of data or it lags when updating large dashboards, you may need to choose a different tool.

Organize Your Data Dashboards with Domo

Domo’s data dashboard software empowers you to make smart decisions with our real-time insights and on-the-fly analytics. Whether you’re on desktop or mobile, our reliable platform gives you timely alerts when key data changes. Domo transforms your masses of numbers into curated data stories to share insights with context and narrative. To learn more about how our data dashboards can help you get more insights from your data, try it for free today.