Data dashboards are supposed to connect data to business goals. But when business teams can’t see those connections, dashboards remain underutilized.
Business teams that don’t understand the value of data projects struggle to apply dashboard data to their work. This ambiguity prevents organizations from fully leveraging their data to drive business impact.
Ethan Aaron, founder and CEO of Portable, and Shinji Kim, founder and CEO of Select Star, offer insights on optimizing dashboard strategies to address common issues.
How Many Dashboards is ‘Enough?’
Many organizations suffer from a proliferation of underused dashboards. Data teams trying to get dashboard sprawl under control often try to apply the Pareto principle, arguing that 80% of value is created by 20% of dashboards.
Trying to decide on the “right” number of dashboards misses the point. You could have 10 dashboards or 10,000 – the number doesn’t matter.
All that matters is how much value each dashboard creates for the business. Dashboards should be measured first and foremost by the impact they have on business outcomes.
Proving the Business Value of Analytics Teams
Analytics teams translate raw data into actionable business insights. To maximize the impact of their work and show their value, they can take steps to not only communicate these insights, but empower business teams to use them.
Treat dashboards as products
Leveraging product management practices can ensure that functional dashboards are also user-friendly and impactful.
The best practices to borrow from product management are understanding user needs, prioritizing high-value features, and continuously iterating based on user feedback.
For example, just as a product manager would gather requirements on a software application, an analytics team should regularly meet with stakeholders to understand evolving needs and refine dashboards accordingly.
Identify high-impact dashboards
This key step often means prioritizing dashboards that influence key business decisions and drive significant outcomes.
Depending on your business objective, a financial performance dashboard executives use to make budgeting and investment decisions may provide more value than a rarely used operational report.
User journey mapping
Mapping out the user journey helps analytics teams understand how stakeholders interact with dashboards and what decisions they need the data to support.
For example, a marketing manager’s journey might include assessing campaign performance, identifying underperforming areas, and tweaking strategies accordingly. A well-designed dashboard should support each step of this journey.
5 Best Practices for Dashboard Management
With effective dashboard management, organizations can turn data into actionable insights that drive business decisions.
Leveraging established practices from product management can significantly enhance dashboard impact and usability.
1. Start with clear business goals
Begin by defining the specific business goals your dashboards should support.
Define Objectives
How can data inform and drive the organization’s strategic goals? Be specific.
For example, if a company aims to increase market share by 10%, the dashboard should focus on metrics such as sales growth in target markets, competitor performance, customer acquisition rates, and market penetration.
It should offer insights into effective customer acquisition channels, trends in customer preferences, and where competitors are gaining ground.
This clarity enables decision-makers to adjust marketing campaigns, optimize sales tactics, and allocate resources to achieve the desired market-share increase.
Align with Strategy
Every metric and visualization should directly contribute to understanding and achieving established business objectives.
For instance, to drive toward the market-share objective, a dashboard for a sales team might include goals such as increasing conversion rates and display relevant metrics like lead conversion ratios and repeat purchase rates.
Meanwhile, the customer service team’s dashboard might include retention goals and display metrics like complaints resolved and contracts renewed.
2. Identify your dashboard audience and their top questions
Identify who will use the dashboard and their primary questions. This will guide what goes into the dashboard.
Identify Drivers
When stakeholders request a new dashboard or feature, it's crucial to understand the underlying business driver. What business need or challenge prompted the request?
For example, if the marketing team asks for a dashboard, the driver might be its need to track campaign performance in real time to optimize marketing spend.
Ensure Relevance
By understanding the business driver, you can ensure that the dashboard delivers insights that have a tangible impact. This helps in creating actionable dashboards.
For instance, if the driver is to reduce customer churn, the dashboard should include churn rates, customer feedback, and engagement metrics.
3. Define each business team’s metrics
Different departments will have different KPIs. Ask each team to define what metrics are most important to them.
Your finance team may focus on revenue, profit margins, and cash flow, while customer success may look at NPS, churn rate, and support ticket resolution times.
Your team should also identify where the data will come from and ensure it is validated before using it in the dashboard. Accurate data is the foundation of reliable dashboards.
4. Assign priorities to data projects
Establish a system for prioritizing data team requests. Set clear criteria for what constitutes high-priority tasks and ensure all team members understand how the priority system works.
For example, high-priority requests might include dashboards that directly impact strategic decisions or operational efficiency.
5. Define what success looks like
Once priorities are set, it's important to define what success looks like for each dashboard. Be specific in defining what will make your dashboard useful.
This could involve specific performance targets, user adoption rates, or decision-making improvements. Clear success criteria will also guide your team with future improvements.
Modernize Your Dashboard Management Practices with Select Star
Addressing the common challenges of dashboard management requires a comprehensive approach to data product management.
Select Star is an intelligent data governance platform that automatically analyzes and documents your data. With features like data catalog, lineage, usage analysis, and AI assistants, Select Star provides an easy-to-use data portal for seamless data management.
Optimize your data management practices with Select Star's innovative solutions and industry expertise. Book a demo to see our tool in action.
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