What is dashboard reporting

If looking at your dashboards causes you any sort of anxiety, your recipients are probably feeling the same. Choose the fewest metrics needed to completely tell your story and you should be in a good place. Track data you can take action on. Data is awesome and powerful, but it can only take you so far. What you choose to do with that data is what really matters.

Focus on data that can influence your processes, hiring decisions, SLAs, annual goals, and so on. Are you using colors, bar graphs, gauges, and pie charts that get the message across pretty quickly and clearly? Avoid lots of text and numbers and use graphics when possible.

Group your metrics into a nice grid. People like symmetry and organization and tend to gravitate towards clean lines that bring a sense of calm. Organize your dashboards as such. Different dashboard reporting tools allow you to modify and resize your buckets to your liking so that your dashboard is designed to your taste. Group relevant metrics together like tickets closed beside tickets opened so that your dashboard report is easy to read. Use dashboard filters.

BrightGauge is a dashboard reporting tool that allows you to add dashboard filters to your reports. This can save you a ton of time. Dashboard Reporting with BrightGauge There are different dashboard reporting tools out there that can help you create meaningful reports.

Our Latest Content. Gauges, Product Read. Modern life runs on data. The reasons can be endless — getting an overview of website visitors, conversion rates, or customer support tickets, to name a few. With so many options available, it can be overwhelming to look into what would be the ideal solution for your needs. Enter data warehousing and snapshots. Up until this point, you may not have been aware of how much you need them. But need them, you do. Quick Links What is Data Warehousing?

Data warehousing refers to the electronic storage of business information. It facilitates data management by allowing users to organize, categorize, and analyze large amounts of data. They are different from traditional databases because data warehouses are specifically designed to perform analytics from large quantities of information.

Data warehouses can extract information from a wide array of sources, including: Relational databases Data software Business applications Processing systems Marketing and sales departments Finance And many more They are beneficial because they collect information consistently, make it easily accessible, allow collaboration, and enable data-driven decision making.

And just like servers, infrastructure is available to keep on-site or cloud-based. Another benefit is that you can compare up-to-date data with historical information so that you can have reference points, track progress, and identify trends.

How a Data Warehouse Works Data warehouses source information at regular intervals — or cadence. You can then create dashboards so that you can identify insights from the collected information. This process involves three layers of data: The first layer contains the extracted information.

The third layer organizes it and displays it on dashboards. This upgraded version includes a Snapshots feature, which captures even more in-depth, complex data and performs calculations. There are several clear advantages to using our Snapshots solution: 1. Use Automatic Compilation of Metrics Data can come from so many different sources, in so many different formats. And while there are many tools that help businesses compile data, our Snapshots feature does so automatically and displays it all in one custom-made chart.

How much time do you have to spend nurturing leads before they become so enamored with your services, they choose you over your competitors? It can take months for B2B marketing to work its magic — maybe a slightly shorter timeframe for SaaS businesses. But you want to keep track of the entire process to see whether you can identify any areas for improvement.

Remote Monitoring and Management Tracking If you're managing your company's network through an RMM tool — such as ConnectWise Automate — Snapshots can gather information regarding space usage, server patch status, operating systems, or anything regarding your infrastructure, so that you can identify trending endpoints.

Find a metric that you want to track. Select the timeframe you want to take the snapshots — daily, weekly, or monthly. You can do this by clicking on Design on the top left navigation bar, then scrolling down to the Schedule green button on the left side of the screen. If you choose weekly or monthly, you can choose on the dropdown menus which day of the week or month you want to take the snapshots. Remove the dimensions on the gauges by clicking on Dimensions on the navigation bar at the top of the screen.

Select the camera icon at the top of the page. The most recent data will always appear on the top right corner of the snapshot. If you need visual instructions for how to do this step-by-step, you can watch the video tutorial on our website.

BrightGauge Provides Effective Data Warehousing with Snapshots If you are toggling between many tools, pulling data from each of them, inputting it into an Excel spreadsheet, and then spending hours analyzing it to draw conclusions, you could be eating into many valuable hours of your time. BrightGauge gives you back that time.

Some of our partners have said that our tools have saved them eight to 10 hours per week, which is time they can now spend focusing on revenue-generating tasks. For an in-depth look at the BrightGauge Snapshots and other features, please contact us so we can set you up with a live demo. Customer Success Read. Data is everything.

Salesforce, in its quest to help businesses know about their progress towards goals, links data input from CRM into dashboard reports based on live data. Dashboard reporting based on live data means that you can get up-to-the-minute insights rather than waiting until month-end reports come out.

Because Salesforce CRM is Cloud-based , all entries into the program are automatically updated across all devices. Using dashboards as a way to track progress allows businesses to measure their alignment with actions and results. Parker shows example dashboards to teach customers ways to use data to improve their operations. While many Salesforce users are acquainted with the basics of dashboard reporting, they might not be using Salesforce CRM to their best advantage.

Parker, along with customers Paul Leary and Corey Crellin, give advice for fully harnessing the power of reporting to align vision with daily actions:. Most Salesforce users are familiar with charts and graphs on the dashboard, but visuals can also be embedded on other Salesforce pages. For example, Open Cases and Open Opportunities pages can also show charts and graphs.

The drag-and-drop feature makes it easy to customise screens to fit your needs. For instance, embedding a chart showing Activity History and a Competitive Insights chart on an Opportunity Page gives a sales manager the tools to see how best approach an account with specific knowledge about how to beat a competitor.

Another way embedded charts can overcome obstacles, shows Parker, is by placing Open Cases and Open Opportunities on an Account Home page. Before trying to make a hard sale, a salesperson would be able to see if there are unresolved cases and work to resolving those issues before capitalising on open opportunities.

An agent without that knowledge readily available could damage the customer relationship by asking for a sale before helping the customer resolve current problems. Joined Reports show two sets of data for maximum insight. Another financial dashboard example Parker gives is Joined Reports. By choosing any two measurements, executives can gain deeper insight into their business.

Parker gives an example of advanced dashboard reporting by creating a joined report of Open Cases with Opportunities Pipeline. Comparing the two reports might reveal ways to better help customers by offering them another product.

Any two sets of reports can be compared in joined reports allowing for instant information and insights. Another example of a joined report Parker shares is Contracts and Open Quotes which would give a picture of how many deals have been made and how many need to close.

Use filters to gain insight for effective coaching. Parker shows another important financial dashboard example in the filtering function. Filtering allows data to be narrowed in any report to show key obstacles and insights. Parker shows example dashboards where a sales manager can drill down through the Closed Sales and Open Pipeline reports to show individual rep progress. Using filtered reports, sales managers can see exactly where coaching needs to take place.

Likewise, something critical is compromised when we lose sight of some data by scrolling or switching to another screen to see other data. When an individual dashboard has so much information on it that scrolling is required, the power of the dashboard is diminished because the information that lives there is intended to be viewed together.

Each piece of information on the dashboard is meant to give the reader the ability to answer part of the central question of the dashboard. Lastly, a report will more than likely include written explanations of the data presented. It can also be accompanied by summaries and even recommendations for the future of the business. A dashboard will presume a higher level of understanding of the subject matter by the reader and will not include much explanation, if any at all.

Similarities are relatively few in number. The first, both a report and a dashboard present information. The second, mostly revolves around the content that they have. While charts and tables can appear on both, tables are less likely to appear on dashboards.

As you can see in the table provided below, certain key aspects of a dashboard might also be involved in the creation of a report but they do not have to. A third information update option, although less often entered into this argument, is the Alert. A report is a more detailed collection of tables, charts, and graphs and it is used for a much more detailed, full analysis while a dashboard is used for monitoring what is going on.

The behavior of the pieces that make up dashboards and reports are similar, but their makeup itself is different. A dashboard answers a question in a single view and a report provides information. Put in another way, the report can provide a more detailed view of the information that is presented on a dashboard.

This is more than just a semantics argument, in order for something to be considered a dashboard it should meet some simple requirements. The whole point is that when calling something a dashboard, or using a dashboarding platform to its most effective level, certain best practices should be encouraged.

There is a lot of free data out there, ready for you to use for school projects, for market research, or just for fun. Before you get too crazy, though, you need to be aware of the quality of the data you find.