How do you create a business dashboard?
Efficiency question :
A dashboard is first and foremost a decision-support tool. When it is well designed, it reduces uncertainty, helps decisions be made more quickly and relies on performance indicators that measure what truly matters to the organization.
The objective is therefore not simply to present data visually. An effective dashboard must transform available data into useful information that helps users understand a situation, track its evolution and make decisions more easily.
Key considerations:
Before creating a dashboard, you need to make sure the required data is accessible and clearly determine what the organization wants to measure.
Every organization has its own priorities. It is therefore important to identify the relevant performance indicators before developing the dashboard. The quality of the result depends as much on the choice of those indicators as on the quality and availability of the data used to produce them.
Challenges:
The main challenge is to bring together the required data, sometimes from several sources, structure it and transform it into performance indicators that are useful to the organization.
Power Query can retrieve data from different sources and shape it before it is used.
Power Pivot can then be used to create calculation measures. These measures perform calculations across different categories of data in order to create the performance indicators that will feed the dashboard.
Technology:
- Microsoft Power BI can be used to create professional dashboards from data coming from different sources.
- Power BI Desktop is used to develop the dashboard, structure the data, create the required measures and design the different visuals.
- Power BI Service is then used to publish the dashboards and make them accessible to the appropriate users.
- Excel can also be used to create dashboards by using its analysis and dynamic display features. The choice of tool depends on the need, the available data and how the dashboard will be used and shared.
Developer's advice:
Before starting a Power BI project, make sure you understand the different components involved in building a dashboard.
An effective training path is to start with Power Query and Power Pivot to learn how to retrieve, structure and use data. Training on DAX functions can then deepen your ability to create the calculation measures required for performance indicators.
Power BI training can then bring these skills together so you can create dashboards in Power BI Desktop and publish and make them accessible with Power BI Service.
A good dashboard does not start with the choice of charts. It starts with a much more important question: what information will actually help the organization make better decisions?