Reporting Dashboards: Definition, Purpose & Examples
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In this modern world, data has value. This is because it provides insight into critical aspects of a business to enable decision-making that will make a business flourish. It is important to note that reporting dashboards have become important tools for the management of organizations that aim to use their data effectively. But what is a reporting dashboard, and why should your organization consider using it?
In this blog, we will focus on the meaning, purpose, and examples of reporting dashboards, and we will show how some of the dashboards by ProHance can be used to enhance business performance.
What is a Reporting Dashboard?
A reporting dashboard is one of the tools that is used in the presentation of the business’s data within a single interactive environment and in a graphical form. The primary purpose of these dashboards is to manage information in such a way that there is minimum use of text and a maximum of charts, graphs, and tables to portray data that has been collected in bulk.
Elements of Good Reporting Dashboards
The following are the common elements of a reporting dashboard:
- Data Visualization: Data visualization converts raw data into interpretable and easy formats. These include data presentation through graphs, pie charts, and heat maps.
- Dashboard Layout: The layout consists of design elements used to present data. A good layout is great, as it is internally consistent and leads the user’s eyes towards the vital information first. Usability is further improved by the usage of elements such as tabs, filters, or navigation menus.
- Customizable Interface: Dashboards provide multiple interface designs and widgets according to the requirements of a variety of users, including C-level executives and the managers in charge of departments.
- Real-time Data Integration: Instead of providing data that is static and out of sync with business activities at the present time, the dashboards combine data in real-time from numerous sources.
- Features supporting collaboration: Dashboards provide certain collaborative tools, like data sharing, providing comments and tracking changes. These functionalities make team collaboration more efficient and help keep all members in sync.
Dashboard Reporting Types
The effectiveness of dashboards depends much on the fact that there are many of them, and each one is aimed at fulfilling certain business requirements:
Operational Dashboards
These types of dashboards are used to track the current state of business processes and activities. They allow for immediate understanding of issues pertaining to the daily operations of the business, such as how many sales have taken place, how many goods have been produced or how many customer interactions are currently in progress.
Strategic Dashboards
These dashboard reports focus on tracking the progress of the company as devised by the top-level officers within the organization over a period of time.
Analytical Dashboards
These dashboards are mostly used by business or data analysts. These have advanced capabilities where users can slice, dice, or drill down into the finer details, making them great tools for exploring patterns and making decisions based on data.
Strategic Dashboards
These dashboards target intermediate goals within a strategic plan. They assess progress towards specific targets such as marketing campaigns or product development.
Dashboard Reporting Examples in Employee Management
The use of reporting dashboards is key to increasing the productivity of your employees. Below are some more examples of employee management dashboards:
Attendance and Productivity Dashboards
These dashboards include information concerning employee attendance, hours of work put in, and productivity parameters. By identifying absenteeism trends or information on productivity drop, managers may easily solve problems that exist and may arise.
Employee Engagement Dashboards
Engagement dashboards track metrics like participation in training programs, feedback scores, and turnover rates. These data insights help HR teams to enhance job satisfaction and reduce attrition.
Performance Evaluation Dashboards
These dashboards make it possible to gather information from analyses of performance, goals, and skills improvement, which help track the growth rate of an employee. This information is important in planning for the career progression of an employee or succession management.?
How to Create Best Reporting Dashboards?
Building a dashboard is no simple task and does require more than one bullet point. There are steps supporting your skills as outlined.
Define Your Objectives
One of the first steps is defining the purpose of the dashboard. Whether it is to check on sales, employee performance, or customer satisfaction, your objective will guide the design process.
Select Relevant KPIs
According to your objectives, select the key performance indicators that need to be displayed. It is not wise to fill your dashboard with too many numbers.
Choose the Right Tools
Choose a dashboard tool that meets the specific requirements of your work and fits your needs. Consider whether it has functionalities such as embedding data in real-time, personalization capabilities and features for collaboration with other team members.
Design the Layout
The design should be logical, whereby the most important details are easily viewable. Employ visual hierarchies to direct the attention of the users and make the use of the dashboard more easily.
Test and Iterate
It is essential to make adjustments as users demand after the dashboard has been deployed. This implies that certain functions should be continuously improved in order to remain relevant within the changing business context.
Prohance Dashboard Reporting Explained
ProHance is a full-service workforce analytics and business operations enablement platform that features powerful business dashboards. Here’s an overview of the key modules:
Work Time
This module auto reports work activities within working hours, thus revealing the time utilization trends and work patterns. This module is very helpful when teams are working from home and hybrid setup.
Work Output
This module is geared towards the assessment of the employees’ output, and it assists organizations in meeting the set productivity criteria. It helps in measuring and improving individual and team productivity for a peak business performance.
Workflow Management
This dashboard allows business process automation with features like – automated work allocation, prioritization and distribution to team members. This helps to identify bottlenecks in business processes and optimizing operations.
Advanced Analytics
ProHance’s advanced analytics module provides deep insights through detailed data analysis. It helps in data-driven decision-making and provides lean management capabilities to enterprises while fully utilizing their business data.
Asset Optimization
This module tracks how digital assets are utilized, both softwares and hardware. It helps in optimizing usage of paid licenses and hardware assets like laptops and desktops.
Also Read: How to Find the Best Employee Performance Review Software?
Wrapping Up
Reporting dashboards are some of the most powerful tools every company should have in this current era, where dependence on data has surged. If the right kind of dashboard is selected and appropriately utilized, the business is bound to derive critical information, make data-driven decisions, and create better value. ProHance range of dashboards is certainly one of the most efficient ones since it is specifically engineered to address the challenges faced by modern businesses.
Frequently Asked Question
Q1. What is the distinction between a dashboard and a BI tool?
BI tools include all the stages of the activities geared towards data collection, analysis, and presentation to improve decision-making, while a reporting dashboard mainly emphasizes the presentation of the collected data.
Q2. Can reporting dashboards work and pull data from multiple data sources?
Yes, most modern reporting dashboards are able to pull data from multiple sources. This enables the companies to consolidate information from several places, including CRM, financial software, marketing analysis tools, etc., into a single view.
Q3. What are some of the don’ts when designing a reporting dashboard?
These are some of the common pitfalls you should strive to avoid when designing a reporting dashboard.
- Overcrowding the dashboard with metrics.
- Picking the wrong kind of chart or graph for the data.
- Implementing changes without consulting the users.
- Lack of context.
