The Benefits of a Business Dashboard

The amount of data businesses generate today is incredible this information tells a story. It has a narrative that gives organizations valuable and actionable insights. These insights guarantee better and more informed decisions.

However, making sense of all the data a business generates is no easy task. And the volume is so large! It presents a challenge in itself. the benefits of a business dashboard like Microsoft Power BI and the business intelligence (BI) it provides are numerous. As a small business owner you might not know much about business dashboards or BI, but here is what it will do for you to make your company more efficient. A business dashboard manages your information by tracking data points that are key to your organization. Essentially, it is an information management tool that makes the data you need available for the day to day operations of your company in a more easily digestible form.

Businesses that can Benefit from Business Intelligence

The vast majority of businesses today have a digital presence. This means they are generating data at all times, whether it is internally or externally. This data could include customer purchase history, website visitors, email and phone lists and more. This data can be important for future marketing efforts, supply chain management, and more. With this in mind, the business case for a business dashboard is even more relevant. The data has to be properly analyzed to generate valuable insight. For small business operators this may seem unnecessary. However, the benefits of BI are far too important to ignore as the world we live in continues to get more connected.

Key to a Great Business Dashboard

The key to a great business dashboard is to be able to design it to be viewed from anywhere. This allows decision makers to easily access data on a tablet, like the Microsoft Surface Pro, or on any other device. BI from Microsoft provides information that helps you make critical decisions about your business and it allows you to get that information anywhere on any device. The service creates interactive reports and brings your business’s reporting capability to today’s highly dynamic digital environment. Once you have it in place, will get more value out of your data, consolidate and automate multiple data points, and align all of your departments.

Here is What a Business Dashboard Can Do for You

For example, a business dashboard lets you deal with data overload to track metrics across the entire organization. In addition, it allows you to view current performance levels by simplifying complex data sets.

Increase Visibility

At its very core, one of the greatest benefits of creating a Power BI dashboard is to provide visibility your entire organization as needed. This means the information you need is available on-demand without having to wait for weekly or monthly reports with the necessary insights to be able to respond to changing market conditions.

Improve Agility

Having this type of visibility leads to the agility your business will need to make quick decisions. With regular reporting on ongoing performance measurements, if and when conditions change, the strategies you have adopted can be quickly adjusted in real-time to fit what’s happening now.

Develop Efficiency

As you become more agile, you will be more efficient across the board because decisions will be made with deeper understanding of the data and the effects it will have on the business. The information the business dashboard converts into reports comes from a single source: your organization. So you will have access to accurate information you can rely on.

Save Time

Being efficient saves time and resources. With BI, your business will not spend valuable time generating reports from multiple systems, using personnel from IT and other departments, and logging in to different platforms and systems. This time can instead be used to make improvements within the organization in departments or processes that are not performing.

Monitor Performance

With more time available to the company, the performance of the entire organization can be monitored in a timely manner. By not having to wait for weeks and months to generate performance reports, employers can identify issues much more quickly. Employees will improve because they are receiving data on their performance more frequently, whether it be daily or weekly.

Evaluate Progress

The performance data from BI lets you to evaluate progress your business is making in near-real-time, so you can easily measure the time it takes to meeting goals. And it allows decision makers to institute changes as needed. The reports the business dashboard generates can quantify how long it takes to see results from the changes that have been made. Based on this data the best options can be selected in the future when a change needs to be implemented.

Provide Better Overall Understanding of the Business

The goal of good business dashboard and BI solution is to allow you to get a better overall understanding of your business. This includes the past, present and future so you can develop a clear advantage over your competition. And because you have a complete view of the entire business operations, you can better plan for the present and future success of your company.