Running a business requires data.
Without accurate information, it’s impossible to make all the little day-to-day decisions that keep your business afloat.
Enter business intelligence (BI) dashboards. They give you a snapshot of how your business is performing at any time.
In this article, we’ll go over what BI dashboards are and the benefits of using them.
Let’s get started!
What Is a Business Intelligence (BI) Dashboard?
A business intelligence (BI) dashboard is a collection of graphs, charts, tables, and other data visualizations accessible from one screen. It tells you how your business is doing at any given moment.
BI dashboards can include data on sales, operations, marketing key performance indicators (KPIs), and more. The point is to give you a way to stay on top of how your business is performing.
Whether you run a small business or a large enterprise, a BI dashboard is an essential integration you can’t afford to go without, and I’ll tell you why.
A BI dashboard lets you do all of the following:
- Get real-time analysis
A BI dashboard can be hosted in the cloud to provide updates in real time. That means you can also access it anytime and anywhere.
For example, you could pull it up on your mobile device, tablet, or laptop just as you could from a desktop computer. BI dashboards are highly accessible.
The real-time data that BI dashboards provide can be used to compare your business’s performance to past periods. That way, you have a better sense of the business’s overall health.
- Standardize data
Another benefit of BI dashboards lies in the ability to standardize data across the organization.
With all of the different key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be tracked (e.g. revenue growth, revenue per client, profit margin, client retention rate, customer satisfaction, etc.), it’s easy to get lost.
A BI dashboard helps makes sense of all the data by making it uniform and predictable. That way, team members can read and interpret the data with little trouble.
- Improve efficiency
BI dashboards give you data at a glance. Instead of hunting down information, you can look to one source for all your business performance metrics.
You also don’t have to spend any time producing or maintaining business data since BI dashboards update automatically.
On top of that, you can customize BI dashboards to fit your specific needs. For example, you can design your own custom BI dashboards with the help of a BI dashboard creator.
Overall, BI dashboards help you improve your operational efficiency.
- Make data-driven decisions
With a BI dashboard always in view, your business decisions will inevitably become more data-driven. This will help your business succeed. Instead of relying on intuition and emotion, it will be constantly guided by what the data says.
- Discover valuable insights
Lastly, BI dashboards can help you uncover valuable insights.
For example, you may find that your profit margins are shrinking or that you’re not retaining clients for very long. Such information is valuable because it shows where you need to focus your attention.
You can also use historical performance data to predict future trends. For example, if you see that your sales tend to increase around the holidays due to gift buying, you can expect this trend to continue (if business and economic conditions remain the same, that is).
A BI dashboard provides a wealth of insight on a single screen.
The bottom line
Ultimately, BI dashboards are an indispensable tool for any business owner. Don’t let your competition beat you just because you lack real-time data. Stay informed and see your business grow to new heights as a result.
