Business Intelligence Dashboard Best Practices & Examples

business intelligence dashboards

There is no surprise in the fact that millions of data transactions take place at a time that your eye takes in a blin. Data is everywhere, and you can see it with a click. But do you think it will work? Although data is essential, it is only helpful once it gets a structure. The more usage of data is in the business world where they need to keep details of each transaction with customers, operational data and the data they need to keep for future purposes. 

The best way to shape the structure and create a better data visualization is by using Business Intelligence, aka BI. This software helps businesses shape their data more user-friendly, such as graphs, charts, reports, and dashboards. One of the prime benefits of business intelligence for businesses is – that you can make decisions based on generated data instead of guessing game play. Here a BI dashboard plays an important role, and it can be leveraged more by following best practices. If your question is, what are these? Then this blog will take you through all the required information, so continue with it.  

Let’s start with the basics!

What is Business Intelligence?

It is a data collection and analysis process to help enterprises or businesses make informed decisions using their business data insights. Its standard functionalities include data analytics & reporting, dashboard development, data mining, event processing, business performance management and more.  

What Is a Business Intelligence Dashboard?

A business intelligence dashboard stands for a tool that represents extracted data from multiple sources on a single screen. It is counted as one of the critical capabilities of the Business Intelligence platform. It supports complete data customization to device the desired information where analysis results can be shared with others.  

The prime objectives of BI dashboards are tracking and analysis of KPIs (key performance indicators) such as sales, revenue, customer satisfaction, and inventory levels. Additionally, it can be used for tracking the performance of employees r departments or teams.  

An enterprise can use Business Intelligence Dashboards can be used for different purposes. If your question is- What is the example of a business intelligence dashboard? Then there are some use cases that you would like to read.  

  • Sales Dashboard: you can use it for tracking sales, customer leads, and opportunities to boost sales.   
  • Marketing Dashboard: it helps marketing teams to track the progress of marketing campaigns, social marketing campaigns, and more.  
  • Financial Dashboard: it facilitates tracking revenue and expenses.  
  • Operations Dashboard: the operational dashboard helps in tracking operations performance.  

Overall, it is beneficial in all terms for the best results. You can also take the help of experienced Power Bi dashboard service providers.  

What Are the Benefits of Using a Business Intelligence Dashboard?

There are multiple benefits associated with business intelligence dashboards that you can experience. The only condition is that you must know how to use it. So, let’s see what these are.  

  • Addressing Specific Business Needs 

Multiple data sources can help you to address specific business needs, but more is needed. Here the business intelligence dashboard will help you to extract and access desired info to make data-driven decisions for the best results. The BI dashboards are known for providing rich data visualization through charts and graphs.   

  • KPI Tracking 

The complete form of KPI is Knowledge Performance Index, which stands for a measurable value that helps evaluate a business’s progress, whether it achieves desired targets or not. BI dashboard works tremendously in tracking KPIs. Effortlessly an organization can view and analyze KPI-related data. For more specific results, KPI dashboards can also be used. 

  • Empower Users for Better Info Accessing & Understanding 

Business Intelligence Dashboards offer multiple ways to access better and understand business information. It makes things easy to get the information quickly. As a result, the users or employees can make better decisions.  

  • Bridging the Gap 

An enterprise can leverage the BI dashboard to identify the trends and bridge the gap between their efforts to adopt them. They can find out the weak points and what measures they can take to overcome them for business growth.  

  • Real-time Reporting & Analysis 

One of the best advantages of a business intelligence dashboard is real-time reporting & analysis, which is crucial for all businesses or enterprises. The managers can quickly generate and analyze the reports to meet business objectives.  

Business Intelligence Dashboard’s Best Practices to Follow  

For leveraging the business intelligence dashboard, you need to follow some practices that can ensure fine results. Here are some of the best practices that you need to follow.  

  1. Identify Reporting Needs & Audience 

Before using BI Dashboard, the first practice you must follow is to identify all reporting needs-such as What kind of reporting do you need? What is the purpose of reporting? To whom are you going to report? Who will be using your dashboard? What information do they need to see? Once you have identified the needs and target audience, it will lead you to customize your dashboard for use. 

If you know, then you can do it, but if not, then the benefit is in getting help from any Power BI consultation companies.   

  1. Must Know Types of BI Dashboards  

It is also important to know about the types of dashboards, like what are the types available and what will suit your needs. Remember what dashboard you will use sole purpose is to use it for informed- decision-making. 

So, the types exist, such as strategic, analytical, operational, and tactical. Identify the suitability and use the BI dashboard you need.  

  1. Choose the Right Data  

It is okay that using a BI dashboard is beneficial, and you can use it. However, if you know about the correct data and sources, then efforts can turn more useful. 

Collecting useless data will waste your time and money, so it would be worth finding – Which data is relevant to your audience? Is the data updated regularly? It is always good practice to use the data and sources that can help you to track the goals.  

  1. Use Clear and Concise visuals.  

Data disorder can bring disastrous results, and it can also lead to disorder in the dashboard, so the best practice is to use charts, graphs, and other visuals to make your data easy to understand. 

The reason is that the human brain is designed to catch information fast from visuals instead of texts, which is why data must be represented correctly.  

  1. Keep Your Dashboard Simple  

Too much information can’t be helpful if it does not let the user navigate to the desired piece of information. One of the best dashboard practices to follow is not to overload your dashboard and make it precise so the user can easily find the information instead of going through too much data.   

  1. Make An Interactive Dashboard 

A Static dashboard can distract the users, so make an interactive dashboard that allows users to take a deep dive into the data for more details. Here you can use some filters such as: 

  • Drill Downs: it allows data drilling to the deeper level of the hierarchy  
  • Drill Through: like drill-downs but provides additional information via popups.  
  • Click-to-filter: users can click on any graph then the dashboard will be filtered accordingly.  

Conclusion

If you want to get data-driven insights, then business intelligence dashboards are a valuable tool for businesses of all sizes. It leads a business to rich data visualization and empowers businesses to make informed decisions quickly. By following the best practices mentioned in this blog, you can customize an informative dashboard that is easy to use and interactive. It is time to start with the business intelligence dashboard following the best practices.