Best Dashboard Software

A dashboard is a one page summary of up-to-date information about key performance indicators of your business in the form of graphs and visuals. This data provides valuable insights into your business organization's current position in all aspects, helping you to make quick and accurate decisions. The best dashboard reporting tools can gather the data across an organization, convert that information into visual form, and display it in an extremely comprehensive manner.

The dashboard software would allow you to view real-time information and alarm you for any problems that are likely to occur in advance. That helps you promptly take the required action and save your business from unforeseen conditions. So, let's drill down to the detailed information about dashboard software in this buyers' guide as that would help you in making the right and smart selection.

Dashboard software is a tool that extracts data from different applications, processes, and systems to display in a centralized location. It converts the data collected from different sources in the form of customized graphs, charts, tables, timelines, and gauges, which can be easily comprehended by even non-technical users. This helps in making informed decisions that can improve the efficiency of business workflows.  

The purpose of an effective dashboard platform is to create relevant, real-time, and easily comprehensible chunks of information by -

Extracting value from data - A dashboard software presents the data in a manner that helps in obtaining valuable information from it that can help you in reaching to a conclusion.

Consolidating Multiple Data Points - The information vital to a business is scattered over different applications and platforms. A dashboard software combines multiple data points and brings all the information at a centralized location.

A dashboard tool can help you in creating brilliant dashboards. Some of the dashboard examples include -

Executive Dashboard

An executive dashboard is a one place destination for executives and CEOs to gain at-a-glance visibility over their business performance across all departments and projects.

Sales Dashboard

A sales dashboard provides information to the sales team about the achievements, failures, and opportunities on a real-time basis.

Marketing Dashboard

The marketing dashboard is used by marketing professionals to gain visibility over the performance of their marketing campaigns to improve brand recognition and relationships with their audience.

Call Center Dashboard

The call center dashboard provides the latest metrics about the call volumes so that the highest quality service to the customers can be delivered.

Healthcare Dashboard

The dashboard for healthcare generally includes metrics that can tell you about the costs, compliance level, patient satisfaction, etc., helping to monitor and improve overall healthcare services.

Social Media Dashboard

A social media dashboard is required to track the engagement level of your audience across different social media platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

The dashboards are often confused with reporting and business intelligence data. The below-mentioned information can help you in differentiating each one of them.

Business Intelligence

Business intelligence is an advanced version of reporting. It refers to the dynamic tools, applications, technologies, and practices that are used to collect, analyze, integrate, and represent business information that can answer some critical questions that support better business decision making.

Dashboard

Dashboard refers to collecting the data from different sources like social media platforms, analytical tools, websites, etc. and representing it in an easy to understand form that helps in analyzing the past and current situation so that informed business decisions can be made for the future.

Reporting

Reporting refers to providing static information about the past and current situation of the finance, sales & marketing, and other operations running within a business organization. It doesn't include the features that can help you to drill down or spin the data to have a different perspective to a set of information. Reporting follows a specific format that cannot be changed or manipulated like it can be done using business intelligence.

The business professionals are often under pressure to retrieve the information from different sources and come up with compiled data that can help them make vital decisions. A dashboard platform is key to this challenge.

As per the survey conducted among C-level executives of U.S. organizations - 60% of respondents said that their organization is likely to purchase dashboard systems and business intelligence reporting tools to enhance their marketing activities.

Access to the Customized Information

The best dashboard tools allow you to customize the set of information you need to access. All the information might not be useful to you. If you are handling the marketing department, you don't need access to the accounting department's data. The dashboard tools can be customized in such a manner that each user can view the level of detail required to get their tasks done and meet their goals.

All The Information At One Place

Without the dashboard software, the users need to spend a lot of time retrieving data from different sources, then reviewing and analyzing that data to reach a final conclusion. A dashboard platform allows you to view the data you need at a glance, all in one place. This can save you time and provide access to accurate information easily at your fingertips.

Enables Drilling Into Details

Detailed information is required to make critical business decisions and reach to the conclusions. You need to have answers to several questions before deciding on a new strategy as it will impact your business in terms of finance and reputation both. The dashboard platform includes filters, variables, and objects that allow you to access deeper information that you require to make decisions required to achieve your specific objectives.

Representation of Data In An Intuitive Manner

The dashboard software represents the data in a graphical form easily understandable for even non-technical users. Also, it allows smooth navigation throughout the information. No more complicated and exhaustive training is required to analyze and retrieve information from different research reports. The dashboard is there to represent the data required intuitively.

Helps In Gaining Departmental Transparency

The dashboard software allows you to view the individual performance of each process and department running within the organization. Moreover, it helps identify issues like low productivity, delays in the delivery of products or services, etc., so that you can improve the departments' performance lagging. This enables you to improve the overall performance and accelerate the growth of your business organization.

Can Predict Customer Behavior

Any reporting software can tell you last month's sales figures. However, only a dashboard platform compiling information from different sources can provide you with the answer to why customers prefer to buy from you or why they don't. This helps in improving your old methodologies and designing new sales and marketing strategies that can take your business to the next level.

As you go ahead with your research for different dashboard tools, it is important to know the users that would benefit from it. The requirements about dashboard platforms can vary depending on the users and their role in your business organization and thus impact your purchase decision.

Business Owners

The business owners, partners, and stakeholders would prefer monitoring the overall performance of different departments including finance, HR, operations, production, etc. The dashboard platform you select should allow accessing the critical metrics about various departments from a single interface. The users falling under this category no longer will have to utilize their time and efforts in contacting different departments for the real figures. They can have access to accurate information on their fingertips.

Department Heads

Many dashboard solutions include department-specific reporting systems helping the users access only the information relevant to their respective departments. For example, a sales head has nothing to do with the number of new recruits to the organization last month, right? Having access to department or process-specific information would allow users to manage the tasks with higher efficiency.

Corporate Executives

The executive-level employees need to generate and submit the reports to the higher authorities for decision making. Ensuring all the reports are accurate, concise, and clear is the responsibility of the executive submitting them. This category of users usually requires a dashboard system that can be easily customized and can integrate with multiple sources, helping them speed up generating reports they require.

The type of dashboard software depends on three aspects - Functionality, price, and deployment. Let's go through the details about each one of them.

A. Functionality

i) BI Dashboard Software

BI dashboard software is a tool that can display ad hoc and real-time figures about different areas of your business. This business dashboard software allows you to get to the bottom of the root cause and analyze the abnormalities in the results. For example, to analyze a decline in sales in a particular region, your business performance management software would allow you to create a report that shows all the incidents relating to negative publicity and slow sales within that region for a particular period. This makes BI dashboard software an important tool for the companies to implement improvements and make the right decisions.

ii) KPI Dashboard Software

KPI dashboard software is also known as KPI monitoring software, is a tool that allows you to analyze the key performance indicators of different departments of your business organization. For example, the sales dashboard software can help you in retrieving information about certain key performance indicators like open opportunities, conversions, profit earned, etc. Similarly, the marketing dashboard software would help you to analyze key performance indicators like campaign performance, return on marketing investment, etc. The best KPI software can show you the real figures about your KPIs pertaining to different departments and helps in controlling your business efficiently and achieving success.

iii) Website Dashboard Software

Website dashboard software helps you analyze the complete information about the visitors on your website, like their geographical location, IP addresses, the pages they visited, etc. Moreover, you get the complete details on the metrics on how your website is performing in terms of organic visitors, search engine marketing results, social media performance, and many more aspects. This helps you to improve your online marketing strategies and win more business.

B. Deployment

i) Open Source Dashboard Software

Open source dashboard software is usually a web-based software that you can download and run on your computer or server. In this type of software, the source code is available for free, which you can customize as per your business requirements. Open source dashboard software can be a perfect option for the companies having specific requirements and a limited budget. However, it requires infrastructure and technical knowledge to implement open source dashboard software and integrate it with the other systems you are currently using in your business organization.

ii) Cloud-Based Dashboard Software

The cloud-based dashboard software doesn't require downloading on your server or device. All you need is just to log in and start using it right away. It also doesn't require to be technically sound to use cloud-based dashboard software. There are many cloud-based dashboard software available on a monthly/yearly subscription. Some of them also provide a free trial period so that you can check whether it suits your business requirements or not.

C. Price

i) Free Dashboard Software

There are several free and open source dashboard software that you can download and customize as per your business requirements. Also, there are many cloud-based free dashboard software that are like Dasheroo, allowing you to instantly access and monitor all your business metrics from one place on any device at any time and anywhere.

ii) Freemium Dashboard Software

Many dashboard solutions have a freemium version that allows you to use limited features or access to the entire software for a limited period. For example, datapine offers a 14 days free trial period. If you are not confident about the performance of particular dashboard software, you can try its freemium version to test whether it suits your requirements before investing in it.

iii) Paid Dashboard Software

There are different options available when it comes to paid dashboard software like -

Subscription-Based Dashboard Software - There are several cloud-based software available at monthly, yearly, or one-time subscription charges. For example, dashboard software like Slemma offers different monthly subscription packages starting from $99 to $599 depending on the number of users, features, and functionality. Dashboard software like Yurbi is available at $2500/year and Bold BI is available at $995 one-time subscription charges.

Hiring in-house Software Developers or a Freelancer - The companies having specific requirements prefer to hire in-house software developer or a team of software developers to get the dashboard software developed as per their requirements and pay them fixed monthly salary.

Outsourcing Software Development Project - Many companies prefer to outsource the entire software development project to a freelancer or a software development company and pay them their quoted price.

When it comes to selecting a business performance management software, it should allow you to create dashboards that include accurate data and represent that data in a visually appealing manner at the same time. Some of the key features that would help you in creating dashboards that extremely useful and stunning include:

Filters

The dashboard software you select should allow you to drill down the information using various parameters like date, source, location, impact, etc., depending on your key performance indicators. To make smart, and informed decisions, you need to go deep down the information and find the root cause. These filters can help you in doing that.

Drag-and-Drop Tools

Your dashboard software should include drag and drop tools that help you create and modify the dashboards the way you want with just a few clicks. Even if you are not aware of the coding language, the drag and drop tools allow you to create extremely useful dashboards suiting your business requirements.

Customized Visual Representation

The dashboard software should facilitate you to choose the visual format as per your requirements. You should be able to represent the data in the form of bar graphs, sparklines, pie charts, etc. so that it is easy to understand and derive conclusions from it.

Tab Arrangement

The dashboard software should allow you to arrange the data under different tabs and sections so that clutter can be avoided to make it easy to understand and comprehend the information.

Data Sharing Capabilities

You need to share the gathered data with your subordinates, reporting manager, business analysts, and team members involved in the decision making process. Multiple users can log in to the dashboard software and view the information, but it should also allow you to share the data externally using email and URL sharing options.

Embedded Analytics

Embedding the dashboard code into a website, intranet, or software application is required to extract the data and convert it into readable reports. Your dashboard software should allow you to do that unambiguously.

Collaboration

Like other business applications and software, collaboration is required in dashboard software too. The dashboard software you select should allow you to leave comments, notify team members about an important update, create slideshows, share key business metrics, etc.

Scheduling

The dashboard software can do that for you if you require a particular set of information directly emailed to you on a particular date and time. The ability to schedule the reports helps in staying alert with the critical data impacting your business.

Alerts & Notifications

The dashboard software you select should send alerts and notifications through email or text messages whenever there is a change in the metrics worth paying attention to. This would help you in addressing the problems in advance and save your business from unforeseen consequences.

Similar to any other technology, dashboard software is also consistently evolving. It becomes important to know the trends popular in dashboard software these days to select the one that can help you in creating impactful dashboards for your business organization. So, here are the key trends that are currently driving dashboard software development -

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is used in dashboard software to generate new actionable insights. It can enable you to ask direct questions in the system interface, and the intelligent assistant would gather appropriate information relevant to the questions you asked. These intelligent assistants can process large amounts of data quickly, which helps improve your reporting and decision-making capabilities.  

Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics, also known as forecasting, is becoming increasingly popular in dashboard applications. The capability of forecasting the future using advanced mathematical models and past data points is extremely useful in the cutting-edge competitive business environment prevailing these days. It also helps make the right decisions before the crisis occurs, saving the business from several damages.

Location Technology

Earlier, dashboard solutions included maps to represent geographically based performance metrics visually. Now, with the GPS technology embedded in almost all the latest devices, location mapping has become much more advanced. The modern dashboard tools can now answer location-focused questions on a real-time basis.

Gauges Are Out

Around a decade ago, the gauges used to be very popular as a visualization element in the dashboards. But, as gauges have limitations of presenting data based on only a single dimension, they are out of the trend these days. For example, The gauges can tell you if sales are below the target. But, it cannot show you why the sales are below the target. 

Interactive Content

Today's dashboards provide excellent content experiences by including interactive elements like video, slicers, lightboxes, overlays, etc. The zooming capability has become the must these days because people are highly using their smartphones and tablets to access the dashboards. Many dashboards these days also embed real-time social feeds to highlight the latest information. The inclusion of these types of interactive content in the dashboard helps people derive better insights into the current situation.

Before investing in a dashboard software, you need to evaluate your needs, current infrastructure, and budget. The dashboard software you select should not only suffice your needs but also work according to your business logic so that it doesn’t prove to be a liability in the future. Below are some important aspects to consider -

Multiple Sources of Information 

Identify the type of information you would like your dashboard software to compile and represent in the form of graphs and charts. Whether you want to analyze your business processes, strategies, websites, or software applications, the selection of the dashboard software would depend on the multiple sources from where the information needs to be retrieved.

Number of Users

You need to consider how many people in your organization would require to access the dashboard software and generate reports. The pricing package of the dashboard software also differs based on the number of users. For example, dashboard software like Cyfe is free to use for 1 user but charges $49/month for 5 users and $89 for unlimited users. Thus, this is an important factor to be considered while shortlisting dashboard software for your business.

Mobility

You need to ensure that the dashboard software you select should be mobile-friendly and compatible with the devices you and your team use to access it so that the expected browsing speed and better user experiences can be derived.

Scalability

As the business grows, the requirements pertaining to reporting, analytics, strategies, and decision making also change. Ensure that the dashboard software you select scales with your business, as obsolete systems can provide non-relevant and inaccurate results, which can turn out to be dangerous for the business's financial health.

Integration

The dashboard system retrieves the information from various sources it is integrated with. You need to ensure that the dashboard software you select can integrate with the database system, website, and other software applications you are currently using.

Price

The price of the dashboard reporting tools depends on the features and functionality it provides. Investing in a dashboard software with advanced features that you are never going to use is also not advisable. You need to ensure that you pay for the features you require, and the dashboard software you select is worth its price.

Transitioning from old systems to new systems is always challenging as people get used to their comfort zones and are usually reluctant to change. To ensure successful deployment of the dashboard software you can follow the below-mentioned steps -

Step 1: Setting Up The Infrastructure

If you have chosen a cloud-based dashboard system, then this step might not be useful to you. But, if you have got a customized dashboard software developed, or planning to deploy an open source dashboard system, you need to ensure that you have fulfilled the hardware and software requirements to run the software in the right and secure manner. 

Step 2: Identifying, Educating, and Training the Users

You need to identify the people that will be using the dashboard system in your organization. After that, it becomes highly relevant to educate those users about the benefits and reasons for incorporating the system into your business. Then comes providing the training to the users about how to use the software. Many of the high-level employees in your business organization might be relying on their team members to extract important information about the business. You need to make them self-reliant by explaining the benefits of retrieving the information on their own using the newly adopted dashboard system. 

Step 3: Providing Prompt Support to the Users

While using the dashboard system, if the users have some problem and there is no prompt support, that can drive them away from using the software and return to the old systems of getting their jobs done. Ensure that the dashboard software vendor you have chosen provides timely support to the users or an in-house technical team that can solve the problems of your dashboard system users.

Step 4: Monitoring and Auditing the Usage

Monitoring and auditing the usage of the dashboard system is important as you can detect the pattern that the users follow and ensure that the software is being used for the right purpose. It also helps you identify the problems and react quickly to the failures of the dashboard system and server health issues.

There are many dashboard reporting tools available at different prices, depending on the features and functionality they include. You can select dashboard software at monthly, yearly, or one-time subscription charges depending on your requirements and investment budget. For example, dashboard systems like BusinessQ cost you only as $3/month, and Keen is available at $299/month. If you are not comfortable with monthly subscription plans, you can go for one of the best dashboard tools like Yurbi at $2500/year or DashboardFox at $1500 one-time charges. Many of these systems provide a free trial period to test it before investing a considerable amount.

You can also go through the details of Datapine or iDashboards if you are interested in getting a customized quote for your dashboard reporting software system.

If investing in a new dashboard system is not in your list right now, you can go through these free and open source dashboard software that you can download and customize as per your business requirements.

For more details on the prices of dashboard systems, just go through this complete list of the best dashboard reporting tools available.

The selection of the right software can help you in achieving your pre-determined business goals. GoodFirms is here to bridge the gap between the software vendors and buyers. Below are the reasons that justify that you are never going to regret if you refer to GoodFirms list of software before making complex investment decisions.

• GoodFirms is trusted by reputed companies and software vendors for implementing completely secure and safe processes.
• A customer-centric approach is followed by GoodFirms to list only the competent software, including the latest features and functionality.
• The software listed in every category by GoodFirms includes legit reviews guiding you to make the best choice with 100% confidence.

One thing is certain that having immediate access to the real-time data can be a game-changing factor for your business. For that, creating intelligent dashboards that can not only provide the past and present figures but can also support in predicting the future is required. The best dashboard software can help you in doing that.

We hope that this buyers' guide to dashboard reporting software has been a great source of information, helping you to make the right purchase decision. For more information you can get in touch with GoodFirms team, we would be happy to assist you in selecting the top dashboard software compatible with your business needs.