In our hyper-competitive data-hungry marketplace, the volume, complexity, and diversity of the data sources that businesses rely on continue to expand at a faster and faster clip. Spreadsheets, databases, social data and online applications all contribute to the pool of knowledge, historical data and performance metrics that can be mined for powerful insights that can inform a wide array of strategic business decisions.
Can dashboards really tame the ever-growing data resources of an organization?
With the right features, yes, dashboards have the potential to cull, curate and extract the information most valuable to a business. But certain features are essential to making this a reality. To begin with, data must be made manageable by converting its numerous and diverse data sources into a single, homogeneous resource. This is the first step in mining insights that could not have been realized when volumes of data remained isolated by location, format or platform. That accomplished, queries can access, compare, contrast and summarize results and information from a now single, comprehensive, homogeneous data source.
But data is only useful if it is accurate. Once data has been collected and connected into a single expanded resource, it is likely to be rife with outdated, inaccurate, and duplicate data that will surely degrade decision-making. It’s essential for data to be prepped or “cleansed” to eliminate duplication and errors, and to standardize data fields that originated from diverse sources.
Once the data has been ingested, cleansed and transformed, businesses still need a friendly environment in which to manipulate their data, create dashboards, and reap the rewards of a more inclusive, unified data set. This means the interface should be graphical in nature, with drag and drop ease-of-use, so that building dashboards becomes intuitive and quick to accomplish.
In sum, a dashboard platform that is up to the task of taming the unbridled expansion of data must allow users to connect a wide variety of diverse data sources and then prepare and transform them into a single, accessible, uniform resource. It would provide intuitive and easy-to-use tools that allow business users to build the dashboards that can bring to light the insights that can help them steer their business to success.
Learn more here, in our latest white paper, Powerful Dashboards from Complex Data