What Are the Key Ingredients of a Smart Dashboard?

 

Do you know what makes a clever dashboard a successful tool for your business?  While there are thousands of clever dashboard templates available, if you want to use a dashboard as a strategic tool to help you accomplish your goals and track your progress, it needs to have a few distinct attributes.

 

If you’re planning on implementing a clever dashboard into your business operations, you should know the fundamental tools and features you need, so you can get the most out of it.

 

Today, we’re going to take a look at a few of these attributes so you can get a head start on creating your own smart dashboard for your business!

 

What is a Clever Dashboard?

 

A clever dashboard is a way for business owners to quickly and easily track and manage their business’ key performance indicators.  They are primarily visual and can help business owners quickly and easily learn about their data without needing to decipher spreadsheets or crunch any numbers like they once did decades ago.  With a dashboard, you know exactly where your business stands at a glance, saving you time and resources.

 

Dashboards are customisable and each business will have different tweaks they want included in their smart dashboard.

 

Now that we’ve covered the basic definition, here are a few attributes you should look for in a dashboard that will help you manage your business better.

 

Interactive Features

 

Every component of your dashboard (the graphs, charts, etc.) should interact with the others.  Many people might think that merely plugging the metric-tracking tools into the dashboard is enough.  However, if you want your dashboard to function effortlessly, each display element must share the same information and work together.

 

Relevant KPIs

 

Depending on your business, you might value specific key performance indicators over others. For example, your company’s goal might be to increase sales while another company’s goal might be to reduce their accounts payable.  Depending on your goal, you’ll use different KPIs to ensure that you are on track to meet your objective.

 

 

 

Highly Graphical  

 

Every successful and informative dashboard must have smart infographics that can move and update in real-time rather than being simple static images.  These graphics serve to show decision makers precisely what they need to know about the company’s performance without any of the complicated data.  You can track your business’ performance over time and many of the most sophisticated dashboards will change depending on user interaction as well.

 

Reporting

 

Finally, every dashboard should have a powerful reporting function that turns your data into an easy to understand, highly usable report that your decision makers can use.  Decades ago, reporting financial data was tedious and took the careful eye of a trained professional. Now, with a clever dashboard, this entire process is automated, and with a few clicks, you can generate these smart reports.

 

Let Us Set Up Your Custom Dashboard!

 

At ABJ Business Solutions, along with providing top-notch bookkeeping services for small and medium-sized businesses, we also provide our customers with customised dashboards.  With this dashboard, you’ll have a snapshot of your business’ performance at a glance.  This can help you save time and have a better understanding of your business’ current state.

 

Contact us today to learn more!