Dashboards have proven to be one of the smartest technologies a man has come up with. They have been implemented in organizations of every size and virtually in every industry sector. From automobile industries to industrial industries to health industries, they have been used in identifying the “right metrics” and effectively communicating the same for managing internal constituents of an organization. Dashboards are used for various purposes by departments of management, finances, marketing or sales. However, which type of dashboard proves profitable to a business is still uncertain to its departments. Read on to know more about choosing the right digital dashboard-type for a profitable business.
One of the best ways to monitor real-time or transactional data against key metrics and KPIs tracking is to use an operational dashboard. The metrics on such types of dashboards can be updated recurrently, even up to the minute! These dashboards are incorporated throughout the course of an employee’s daily work routine like in excel sheet or other software like pdf. For instance, a digital marketing agency implements an operational dashboard to track the operations or track ad progress on their digital marketing platform. Operational dashboards often contain contextual information for users to explore the data for better decision making and use it in calculating the losses or profits.
Following metrics can be tracked using operational dashboards:
- For websites: Tracking the inlet of new users and their retention
- Social media platforms: Tracking the follower count or number of comments
- Digital advertising platforms: Tracking the effectiveness of the ad run and the leads generated through it
- Strategic Dashboard
Strategic dashboards aka company dashboards have proven profitable for c-level executives and managers to successfully control sales KPIs and supervise them in one central place while helping teams to reach goals. For instance, a sales dashboard enables its sales team to reach sales goals using the best dashboarding tools to get the detailed analysis of sales performance, cycle lengths and sales funnels. This dashboard can be utilized by the sales employees to calculate the sales of their product in a particular region and accordingly, take better decisions for calculating ROI in that region. These dashboards can be of great help in monitoring data regularly to carry out strategic decisions of an organization.
Following metrics can be tracked using strategic dashboards:
- Monthly, quarterly or yearly fiscal performance of a team or company as a whole
- Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) expressed in percentage
- Income before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization
- Analytical Dashboard
As the name suggests, these dashboards are used to analyse large figures of data. It is also called a financial dashboard or data analytics dashboard for calculating financial numbers recorded on a yearly basis. This data can then be used to examine trends, discover insights, establish targets and discover solutions based on insights obtained from the previously collected data. For instance, it can be used by owners of data warehouses and analysts for tracking product stock, setting analytical goals and increasing visibility into key processes of management. This type of dashboard can store multiple data sources within a single frame for visualizations and analysis.
Following metrics can be tracked using analytical dashboards:
- Annual salary amount on the contract of an employee
- ROI on land purchases or stock purchases
- Figures on a financial report of an organization (also, for comparing previous and current year’s progress)
- Bounce rate of customers
- Cost per lead
- Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
- Website form conversion rate
