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Utilize The Potential Of Digital Dashboards In A Business Environment

Digital dashboards with examples and templates

We live in the age of information. Niche or industry aside, by squeezing every last drop of value from your business’s data, you will become more efficient, innovative, and productive.

Data offers a wealth of priceless insights that will boost the growth and evolution of your business significantly. And, if you fail to use big data to your advantage, you could find yourself falling behind your competitors and eventually becoming obsolete.

But, with so much information and such little time, where do you even begin? Digital dashboards not only help you to drill down into the insights that matter most to your business, but they also offer an interactive visual representation that assists in swifter, more informed decision-making as well as the discovery of priceless new insights.

A data-driven business dashboard is your gateway to advanced business intelligence (BI) - the kind that will accelerate your success in an increasingly competitive commercial world.

Moreover, a dashboard builder is an invaluable commercial tool - if you use it right. To help you on your path to dashboard software enlightenment, we’ll define digital dashboards, look at the business-boosting benefits of data-centric platforms, explore modern dashboard tools, and present a selection of real-life examples. Let's get started!

What Is A Digital Dashboard?

A digital dashboard example for clients showing the number of licenses sold, the total revenue, commission, team performance, etc.

A digital dashboard is an analysis tool that allows business users to monitor and analyze their most important data sources in real-time. With interactive data visualizations, digital dashboards allow for an improved decision-making process and continuous growth.

The user can then oversee many critical areas by displaying historical trends, actionable insights, and real-time information in a digestible, presentational format.

If you're curious to present your insights in a meaningful way, online data visualization is a powerful tool to do so indeed – data-driven dashboards offer a means of gaining access to vital information and delivering it throughout the organization with ease.

The 6 Key Benefits Of Using Digital Dashboards

Now that we’ve looked at a definitive digital dashboard definition, we will continue to explore the six fundamental benefits of using these online data analysis tools within your company.

  1. Decision-making: The accessible visual nature of digital dashboards facilitates faster data-driven decision-making in all critical aspects of the organization by empowering users to analyze and drill down into important metrics and insights with ease.
  2. Accessibility: Expanding on our previous point, the fact that these kinds of dashboards offer intuitive data visualization means that comprehensive training isn’t necessary. On the contrary – modern dashboards are designed to be accessible and easy to navigate. Their graphical nature allows for easy interaction with invaluable information.
  3. Mobility: Digital dashboards are customizable and present every single strand of relevant information in one central location, and the best platforms are also accessible through mobile devices and apps, which means you can access essential information no matter where you are in the world.
  4. Business intelligence: By gaining the ability to access past, real-time, and predictive analytics in addition to clear-cut indicators aimed at growth, evolution, and professional development, you will enhance your team's business intelligence skills – and, ultimately, get ahead of your competitors.
  5. Benchmarking: Sector or industry aside, the best way to achieve or even exceed your goals is by working to clearly define benchmarks that align with your most important objectives. Digital-style dashboards feature dynamic visual key performance indicators that not only serve up invaluable real-time information but will also help you gain a deep understanding of what you need to do to meet important milestones.
  6. Communication: Organizational silos kill productivity and stunt innovation. The flexible yet detailed nature of BI-based dashboards makes sharing and discussing data-driven discoveries swift, simple, and effective. In turn, such tools encourage cross-departmental communication while breaking down communication barriers - both of which are essential to success in the modern age.

Your Chance: Want to build your own, professional digital dashboard?
Try our modern dashboard software for 14 days, completely free!

How Do I Make A Digital Dashboard: Best Practices

Digital dashboard best practices graphic

Now that you have a working knowledge of the benefits and a data dashboard definition for reference, we will move on to the next step.

To help you understand the key ingredients of data-driven dashboards - those that yield real results - here’s a glance at best practices.

1. Take care of your design

First of all, let’s focus on design. To get maximum value from your dashboards, you should always ensure that your design is clear and concise and presents only the relevant information to your organization – nothing more, nothing less. Visually, you should always ensure your dashboard helps to tell you a story and answers all of the questions related to your business’s performance directly, meaning you should never cram in too many widgets as they will only serve to convolute matters. Moreover, you should place all of your information in a logical format that will help you paint a panoramic picture of your information. Consider placing tables at the bottom of the page, as they typically offer less value than charts, graphs, or other metrics. To help you on your way, you can see our guide on the most popular dashboard ideas.

2. Communicate with stakeholders

Secondly, you should sit down collaboratively with other key stakeholders within the organization and decide on your business’s core aims and goals, both time-sensitive and ongoing. 

This process is vital to giving your development efforts a clear-cut direction from the outset - ensuring a healthy return on investment (ROI) as well as sustainable commercial growth.

Essentially, you’ll be able to ensure that your dashboards are designed to offer practical value and, therefore, actionable results.

3. Consider your audience

Expanding on our last point, when you’re developing a modern dashboard, you must consider the end-user and how it will benefit them.

To do so effectively, thinking about your core aims and goals is essential, as it will give you a solid indication of why you’re using these tools for your company. 

Are you looking to prove the value of your recent sales and marketing campaigns to external investors? Do you want your customer service operatives to understand how their processes or performance impact the business? Is offering your HR managers the insight they need to streamline their recruitment processes the aim of the game?

By exploring your core goals as well as how your users (or recipients) will interact with your electronic dashboard data, you will create informational hubs that get straight to the point and offer a wealth of business-boosting value.

4. Take advantage of the 5-second rule

Known in the design world as the “five-second rule,” your creation should always provide relevant information in around – you guessed it – five seconds. If that’s not the case, you should go back to the drawing board and make the tweaks necessary to make your dashboard more digestible. One way of ensuring this is the case is by employing the “Inverted Pyramid” method, where your most urgent or “newsworthy” information is displayed at the top, followed by your most important metrics and details, with any other relevant or miscellaneous information presented at the bottom, as shown in the diagram below. Now, while this type of framework is usually synonymous with journalism, it’s becoming an increasingly valuable blueprint in data-driven digital dashboard design.

Inverted pyramid concept is starting to be used in dashboard design

**Source: Wikimedia Commons**

5. Use contrast and be consistent

In addition to considering the “five-second rule,” you should also aim to use contrasting colors or fonts for different headings and visualizations to draw the users’ eyes to the right places at the right time and make it easier to extract relevant insights at a glance.

But when designing your dashboards and choosing color or font schemes, you must keep your choices consistent across the board to avoid any potential confusion or costly data misinterpretations.

For additional visual and function-based tips, read our complete guide on essential dashboard design principles and best practices.

6. Set the right KPIs

When we define digital analytics dashboards, it’s always important to remember that the primary goal of the best BI tools is to provide actionable information on a specific area of the business. That said, when creating or developing data-driven dashboards, it’s vital that you focus on the most relevant info while working with the right benchmarks, no matter if you need to work on HR KPIs, procurement, or marketing. By looking long and hard at your core company goals, you can select dynamic indicators providing interactive visualizations that empower you to drill down into specific organizational strategies, processes, and functions. By choosing your metrics wisely, not only will you be able to identify strengths and spot weaknesses, but you will gain the ability to tell a story with your data, making it more accessible to other stakeholders within the company.

7. Select the right charts and visualizations

With the right presentation and representation, digital dashboard platforms will be one of the best investments you will ever make. In addition to leveraging a dashboard with key performance indicators, you should always further refine your efforts by considering which chart types will prove most effective for the story you’re looking to tell or the insights you’re looking to display. To help guide your development efforts, here is a quick rundown of the most powerful chart types for digital dashboards in a business environment:

  • Bar charts
  • Line charts
  • Sparklines
  • Scatterplots
  • Bubble plots
  • Number charts
  • Maps
  • Area charts

You can get acquainted with these powerful interactive visualizations by exploring our definitive guide to choosing the right chart types for your business.

8. Paint a vivid picture

With your visualizations in place, you should set realistic benchmarks to measure your success in every key area.

Over a short period, you will begin to see an informational picture forming. If your performance indicators tell a logical story and paint a vivid picture at a glance, your visualization arrangement and design are optimal. If you find that certain information segments are laborious to analyze or feel like a vital piece of the puzzle is missing, you should go back to the drawing board and tweak your design.

To set you on the right path, here’s our guide to data-driven storytelling for your reading pleasure.

9. Develop a sustainable informational culture

Once you’ve reached a place where your digital dashboards are operating at maximum informational efficiency, it’s important to ensure that your newfound BI tools and practices filter down to every single department and person within the organization.

With your reports and templates balanced and digestible, you should empower everyone within the business to use these tools to their (and your) advantage by assigning appropriate user permissions based on the level of accessibility they will require.

It’s also important to run workshops to train everyone on interacting with the new tools while offering access via mobile devices for remote working situations.

By offering the right training and holding regular company updates, you will maximize the value of your new processes, becoming more scalable and adaptable in the process. This brings us to our next point.

10. Keep on changing; keep on evolving

We live in an ever-evolving, tech-driven age where technology, tools, and organizational approaches are in a constant state of flux. That said, to ensure your electronic dashboard or dashboards continue to offer maximum value, periodically reviewing them and making necessary tweaks or updates is a must.

While your reports may offer all the benefits of digital dashboard software today, they could prove less powerful in the not-so-distant future.                   

Take the time to consider how your goals or values may have changed and examine your existing KPIs, charts, and design elements. And if you feel change or improvement is necessary - take action. Doing so will ensure you stay ahead of the game. 

By following these best practices, you will create a BI dashboard that is not only efficient but also offers optimum value to everyone in the business, role, or department. At the same time, you can create an open, collaborative, and idea-driven internal culture that will set you apart in your niche while making your company more efficient than you ever thought possible. 

That being said, the process of creating and implementing professional digital dashboards into your business also comes with some challenges and limitations. Below, we will go through the most common ones. 

Digital Dashboards Common Challenges & Mistakes To Avoid

While implementing data-driven initiatives and technologies has become easier than ever before, the process still involves some challenges, limitations, and common mistakes that need to be tackled to ensure you can extract the maximum potential out of your efforts and investment. Some of these challenges include a lack of data awareness, design limitations, data quality issues, and more. To help you get a sense of what you are dealing with, below we will discuss some key points and ways in which you can mitigate them. 

  • Data quality & security 

The topics of data quality and security are some of the biggest challenges when it comes to implementing digital dashboard tools into your business. On one hand, using poor-quality data can damage the decision-making process and waste a ton of time and resources on implementing the wrong strategies. On the other hand, a data breach or cyberattack can result in your client’s sensitive data, such as credit card information, social security numbers, addresses, and more, being used for financial fraud or even worse. Neglecting quality and security can bring huge financial and operational consequences. Therefore, it is important to implement smart systems to ensure you are working with the best quality data and that that data is protected at all times. Security becomes even more important when you are working in a digital environment. Tools such as datapine allow you to share your dashboards through a password-protected URL to ensure only the right people can access your data. 

  • Dashboard design

As you probably learned in the best practices section, designing a custom digital dashboard is a task that requires a lot of thinking. It is not only about putting some cute visuals together; it is about telling a compelling story that will ensure the audience understands and is engaged with the data. This often presents a challenge, as designers fall into the temptation of using too many elements to enhance their dashboards, making them overcrowded and harder to understand. We recommend you stick to simplicity. Use only 2-3 colors that are not too bright, stay away from 3D effects, use texts wisely, and most importantly, keep your audience in mind at all times. Think about their level of knowledge and the use case of the digital dashboard. Relying on a professional dashboard creator who offers pre-made templates is a great way to get started if you don’t feel comfortable with the design process. 

  • Communication issues 

A successful dashboarding process relies not only on having a great final product but mostly on how all stakeholders communicate with each other. While the data contained in your digital dashboard is supposed to be objective, it can still be interpreted differently if the people working with it are not aligned. This can also happen if some employees are not qualified to analyze the information. Our recommendation is to, first and foremost, assess the level of data literacy across the entire organization and provide the necessary training to those who might need it. After that, you must ensure that analytical goals and priorities are clear and that everyone is working with the same concepts and definitions. That way, you’ll ensure you can extract the maximum potential from your digital dashboarding process. 

  • Using only historical data

This next challenge talks about resistance to innovation. Traditionally, businesses have based their decisions on a static view of their data. The issue with this approach is that historical data is no longer enough to make the fast-paced decisions needed to succeed in today’s competitive business environment. Today, organizations need to rely on a mix of historical insights combined with the power of real-time data. However, there are still many organizations that are reluctant to this change and end up wasting their resources. Combining your past and current performance can help you spot trends and patterns and make more accurate decisions based on what is happening at the moment. The online nature of modern digital dashboard software enables you to get fresh insights as soon as they are generated and with no need for you to perform any manual work. 

Your Chance: Want to build your own, professional digital dashboard?
Try our modern dashboard software for 14 days, completely free!

Top Digital Dashboard Software Features

So far, we’ve outlined a clear definition with clarity and looked at how to create successful data-driven analysis tools. Now, it’s time to look at top digital dashboard capabilities - or features.

1. Data connectors

One of the best features of modern analytics management tools is data connectors. These dynamic connectors offer the ability to connect a wealth of popular platforms (the likes of SQL Azure, Amazon Aurora, DropBox, Google Adwords, and Oracle, for example) and consolidate the information into one central location.

In doing so, you can access every single relevant metric and insight across platforms with ease, bringing your information to life with interactive visualizations, saving time, boosting analytical efficiency, and eliminating fragmentation in the process.

2. Interactive features

Regarding data-driven platform capabilities, working with robust, adaptable, cutting-edge dashboard software will ensure that everything you do is optimized for ongoing and sustainable success. 

To make on-the-spot data analysis possible, today’s design tools are equipped with a host of interactive features designed to make drilling down into specific metrics, filtering information, zooming into charts or visualizations, and customizing dashboards as swift, simple, and accessible as possible.

3. Many chart types & visualization options

Working with the right digital dashboard with key performance indicators will offer you a panoramic view of your most invaluable organizational metrics in all core areas, from finance and HR reporting to IT support, customer service, internal performance, marketing strategy, and beyond. The digital dashboard capabilities of such tools are vast, as you can access every facet of information from one easy-to-navigate, centralized location. 

Modern BI dashboard software provides access to a range of dynamic graphs, charts, or visualization tools that will empower you to extract practical insights that you never knew existed while allowing you to formulate powerful strategies using a mix of historical, predictive, and real-time data.

4. Cross-device accessibility

Digital dashboard development tools are optimized for almost every type of device imaginable -  including smartphones and tablets. 

This level of cohesive cross-device accessibility will empower everyone in your business to benefit from access to invaluable data-driven insights 24/7. In turn, you will foster greater internal innovation and improved communication and, ultimately, benefit from accelerated growth.

5. Enhanced user-control management & security

Another key feature present within modern analytical tools capabilities is advanced user-control management and security.

With a digital business dashboard, it’s easy to set user roles to give the right people the right level of access while keeping your data safe and secure. You can set user controls based on these four areas:

  1. Admin
  2. Editor
  3. Power viewer
  4. Viewer

These four access tiers mean that everyone in the organization can benefit from the power of data, interacting with your dashboards in a way that is appropriate to role, necessity, or level of seniority.

If you want to see an interactive data platform in action, make sure you check our tutorial and get a taste of how your business could benefit from professional visualizations.

6. Automation features

Digital dashboard analytic capabilities are so powerful in our tech-driven age that it’s possible to create automated reports based on various functions and features.

The ability to automate certain reporting and informational management processes makes digital dashboard software an invaluable asset to any organization, as these features boost output while allowing your internal talent to focus on more complex or creative tasks.

Armed with AI technology, these powerful tools can also deliver automatic alerts based on a number of parameters, such as when a new trend emerges or you’ve reached a certain benchmark.

If you want to learn more about the topic, check out our interactive guide on automated reporting.

7. Embedding capabilities

Any digital dashboard worth its salt comes complete with embedding capabilities. This concept is simple yet incredibly useful: you can add the platform or reports to your existing framework (your intranet, in-house application, or website, for example), saving on development costs while gaining access to a wealth of invaluable interactive features.

Another advantage of an embedded dashboard is that you can improve your informational security by restricting access where necessary, which is especially vital if you’re sharing your reports via external portals.

8. Multiple design options

A digital business dashboard with true BI-boosting capabilities offers multiple design options that are not only practical but also easy to implement with minimal technical knowledge.

In addition to offering a host of customization options that allow you to change the page layout and alter the visualizations you work with, it’s also possible to ‘white label.’

White labeling allows you to customize your reports with your company branding, logo, color scheme, and general visual identity, which is an effective awareness tool when presenting your discoveries to clients or external stakeholders.

9. Translation options 

One of the biggest benefits of implementing these modern solutions into your company is accessibility. Your employees can generate dashboards with just a few clicks and access relevant metrics from wherever they are as long as they have an internet connection. But not just that, accessibility is even better thanks to a translation feature that enables you to translate the content of your digital dashboards into more than 10+ languages. This is a great functionality for international companies that work with stakeholders across the globe, as they will avoid generating multiple dashboards in different languages. The labels and any form of text can be easily translated from one language to another in a matter of seconds. 

10. Predictive analytics 

As mentioned earlier, mixing your historical and current performance is an invaluable benefit of these solutions. A predictive analytics feature will enable you to get a glance into the future by analyzing your historical and real-time data and extracting valuable trends and patterns that will turn into accurate forecasts. Forecasting will help you in a number of areas, such as budgeting, inventory planning, promotional campaigns, and more. For example, by analyzing and forecasting your sales data, you might realize that a certain product has always sold more during a particular holiday and that it is likely to happen again. With the forecast, you can now plan your inventory levels and promotional campaigns to boost sales for that particular product.   

Take Advantage Of Digital Dashboard Examples

We’ve explored a digital dashboard definition and its value in a business context. Now, we will share a lengthy list of real-life examples that drill down into key areas of management, IT, service & support, sales, social media, retail, and more. Let’s dive in! 

1. Investor Relations Dashboard

For those in a management position, keeping a firm grip on the company’s operational initiatives is essential – but curating, calculating, and communicating key insights about the business’s overall situation is equally important. That’s where this dashboard comes in:

Investor relations digital dashboard provides the most important information that a shareholder would be interested in

**click to enlarge**

The investor relations dashboard, part of our management dashboard examples series, serves up priceless insights centered on the company’s investors, the information that they would like to see, and the type of insights that help ensure the health and consistency of these relationships.

Drilling down into important indicators, including return on assets, return on equity, and P/E ratio, as well as the all-important share price, this digital dashboard tool provides all critical investment-centric information in one central location.

Primary metrics:

  • Return on Assets
  • Return on Equity
  • P/E Ratio

2. IT Cost Dashboard

As digital technologies evolve and internal systems become increasingly hyper-connected, the ability to track and manage your IT KPIs, especially costs, is pivotal to the ongoing success of your organization.

IT ROI: a costs breakdown

**click to enlarge**

By gaining a more in-depth view of elements, including IT return on investment (ROI), a detailed breakdown of IT costs, and how those costs offset against revenue, this digitally-driven dashboard software offers all the tools for continual departmental success and development.

Every IT manager or decision-maker has to factor costs into their daily operations, and the metrics offered by this particular dashboard will help drive down spending while boosting efficiency—a testament to the power of digital dashboards in a professional environment.

Primary KPIs:

  • IT ROI
  • IT Costs Break Down
  • IT Costs vs. Revenue

3. Customer Satisfaction Dashboard

Without a doubt, customers are the beating heart of almost any organization, and keeping your customers happy will result in ongoing commercial success. To help with such initiatives, the customer satisfaction dashboard focuses on all the customer service KPIs and metrics necessary to track, analyze, and make positive changes to increase overall customer engagement and satisfaction levels.

Customer satisfaction digital dashboard provides information of the beating heart of any organization: their customers

**click to enlarge**

Here, you will be able to enhance the level of customer experience you offer, improve your consumer touchpoints (websites, landing pages, etc.), deal with issues more swiftly, and boost customer retention rates over time – essential to growth, evolution, and development.

Primary KPIs:

  • Customer Satisfaction
  • Net Promoter Score
  • Customer Effort Score
  • Customer Retention

“You can’t solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level.” –Albert Einstein

4. Sales Digital Dashboard

A data dashboard template with a great deal of depth features a comprehensive mix of sales metrics, each designed to help modern sales teams monitor revenue while reducing churn rate and formulating strategies that boost profits sustainably.

A monthly sales report template focused on high-level metrics such as revenue, profits, costs, incremental sales, accumulated revenue, up/cross-sell rates, etc.

**click to enlarge**

In addition to helping sales representatives monitor performance over time, this cutting-edge sales template offers a wealth of insight into cost breakdowns and an interactive sales chart showing incremental sales revenue, among others.

Visually balanced and built to cover all strategic bases, this is the sales dashboard you need for both responsive, at-a-glance information and long-term strategic planning.

This is one of our most powerful and result-driven digital dashboard examples to date and a tool that will ensure your sales continue to grow over time.

Primary metrics:

  • Revenue per Sales Rep
  • Customer Churn Rate
  • Upsell & Cross-Sell Rates
  • Profit Margin per Sales Rep
  • Incremental Sales by Campaign

5. LinkedIn Company Page Dashboard

The fifth of our digital dashboard examples, this most dynamic of additions, focuses on optimizing your success through LinkedIn—the world’s number one professional social network.

A digital dashboard example with a clear overview of key LinkedIn metrics and results over time

**click to enlarge**

Designed specifically to manage the ongoing growth and evolution of your company’s official LinkedIn page, this fluid visual representation of core LinkedIn metrics will help you understand how to encourage engagement and expand your reach on the platform.

Digital dashboards in a business environment don’t get much more valuable than this because if you have the power to optimize your LinkedIn company page, you will start to generate a comprehensive social media report that will enable you to gain a wealth of new leads, forge new business bonds, and become more authoritative in your field.

This perfect storm of metrics, visualizations, and metrics will ensure that you have the right content at the right moment, accelerating your commercial success as a result.

Primary KPIs:

  • Followers’ Demographics
  • Number of Followers
  • Impressions & Reach
  • Engagement Rate
  • Company Update Stats

6. Sales & Order Dashboard

Next, in our definitive rundown of digital dashboards for business, our retail dashboard, focused on sales and orders, is an essential tool for any retailer or eCommerce brand, regardless of niche.

Sales and order retail dashboard showing the perfect order rate, total orders, return reasons, etc.

**click to enlarge**

In our hyper-connected age, online shopping is growing exponentially - and as such, online retail data is vast and plentiful.

While it's true that gaining access to eCommerce-based data is relatively straightforward, without knowing how to channel it, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever be able to use your metrics or insights to their full potential.

By drilling down into sales and orders, this powerful tool provides a dynamic visual representation of key operational elements, including order totals, order status, orders placed by region, perfect order rate, and even reasons for product return.

This cohesive tapestry of visual information and metrics offers a level of depth that will empower any ambitious online retailer to save money, enhance efficiency, and boost their bottom line sustainably. An invaluable tool for the modern eCommerce entrepreneur.

Primary KPIs:

  • Total Orders
  • Total Sales by Region
  • Order Status
  • Perfect Order Rate
  • Return Reason

7. Procurement KPI Dashboard

This digital dashboard example provides an overview of the most essential metrics of the procurement department

**click to enlarge**

Your business's procurement processes are critical to your overall growth and productivity. One weak connection or snag in the supply chain and you will suffer financial loss as well as reputational damage.

As one of our prime dashboard examples, our data-driven procurement dashboard is armed with the KPIs and visualizations you need to track your supplier relationships, manage your compliance rates, and streamline your purchase order cycle time with pinpoint accuracy.

This perfect storm of information will ensure your procurement strategy remains secure and cohesive at all times while improving organizational efficiency.

Primary KPIs:

  • Compliance Rate
  • Number of Suppliers
  • Purchase Order Cycle Time

8. Transportation Dashboard

Logistics Transportation digital dashboard visualizing essential KPIs when it comes to delivery

**click to enlarge**

Today’s digitally native consumers are well and truly in the driver’s seat. To thrive as a business, giving your customers exactly what they want as quickly as possible is essential.

Our dynamic transportation dashboard will give you the insight you need to drive down delivery times while keeping your operational costs at a minimum.

This balanced mix of visual information has the power to help businesses across industries meet their customers’ fulfillment needs head-on while remaining financially efficient at all times. This is a tool that will help your business grow and thrive sustainably.

Primary KPI:

  • Delivery Time
  • Transportation Costs

9. Patient Dashboard

A digital dashboard example displaying patient KPIs of a healthcare facility

**click to enlarge¨**

The next of our digital dashboard examples is of the medical variety. When it comes to patient care, access to information can mean the difference between life and death.

To ensure that hospitals and medical institutions of all varieties are equipped with the information required to track patient care performance in a number of key areas, our patient data platform boasts balanced visualizations and key healthcare metrics such as patient follow-up rates.

Here, you have every pillar of core information required to make vital patient care decisions while remaining responsive to constant change, as well as improving the quality of the service you offer across the board. This is a digital business tool that every medical provider needs in their digital toolkit.

Primary KPIs:

  • Bed Occupancy Rate
  • Medical Equipment Utilization
  • Patient Drug Cost Per Stay
  • Patient Room Turnover Rate
  • Patient Follow-Up Rate
  • Staff-to-Patient Ratio
  • Canceled/missed appointments

Your Chance: Want to build your own, professional digital dashboard?
Try our modern dashboard software for 14 days, completely free!

10. CMO Dashboard

An executive digital dashboard example showcasing high-level marketing KPIs such as cost per lead, MQL, SQL, and cost per customer

**click to enlarge**

The job of a CMO is varied and pressured in equal measures. As such, if you are a chief marketing officer, gaining access to a wealth of high-level insights from one interactive location is vital.

Our dynamic CMO dashboard is packed with metrics, charts, and KPIs that will make real-time decision-making more informed, more accurate, and, ultimately, more valuable.

With deep-dive information on sales growth, cost per lead, website-traffic-to-led-ratio, and more, this cutting-edge tool will see your return on marketing investment (ROMI) soar year after year.

Primary KPIs:

  • Sales Target & Growth
  • Website-Traffic-to-Lead Ratio
  • Cost per Lead
  • Lead-to-MQL Ratio
  • MQL-to-SQL Ratio

 11. Energy Management Dashboard

Energy management digital dashboard with selected KPIs

**click to enlarge**

Niche or sector aside, reducing your energy costs will make your business more financially progressive and greener.

A piece of digital dashboard software developed to drive down unnecessary energy costs, our energy dashboard will empower you to compare usage across industries while tracking your costs according to the source.

Tracking these metrics over time will help you identify potential inefficiencies and create a valuable initiative to drive down your energy consumption while making more informed operational choices. This is an essential tool for every modern business.

Primary KPIs:

  • Power Cuts & Average Duration
  • Consumption by Sector

12. HR Digital Dashboard

A digital dashboard example showcasing recruitment metrics

**click to enlarge**

Next, in our rundown of digital dashboard business examples, we offer you an HR dashboard displaying recruitment metrics that will help you acquire the perfect talents for your business.

By improving your recruitment choices, you will boost staff retention rates while driving up productivity. Getting your recruitment processes just right will also let you avoid wasting time and money.

With KPIs including cost per hire, recruiting conversion rate, and time to fill working in visual harmony, this dynamic tool acts as an informational hub that will dial up recruitment success while driving down costs.

Primary KPIs:

  • Cost per Hire
  • Recruiting Conversion Rate
  • Time to Fill

13. Digtial Marketing Dashboard

As a marketer, measuring the success of your campaigns while justifying your various promotional initiatives is an ongoing task. That said, working with the right metrics consistently is vital to earning a healthy return on marketing investment (ROMI).

Digital dashboard tracking relevant marketing performance metrics for different campaigns

**click to enlarge**

Our next example was created with modern marketing dashboard software and it is equipped with KPIs geared towards measuring engagement as well as costs associated with your various marketing activities.

Armed with these essential metrics, it’s possible to use this digital dashboard template to gain a clear understanding of which campaigns and touchpoints are yielding the best and worst returns. As a result, you can continually refine your initiatives to meet your consumers’ needs head-on while accelerating the company's growth through marketing.

Primary KPIs:

  • Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
  • Cost-per-Click (CPC)
  • Cost-per-Acquisition (CPA)

14. FMCG KPI Dashboard

The next in our rundown is the fast-moving consumer goods hub or FMCG for short. Taking charge of all swift-shifting parts of your supply chain is no easy feat, especially when you’re scaling. But by working with the right metrics, you can get a firm grip on your processes.

Digital dashboard example of an FMCG report tracking metrics for supply chain management

**click to enlarge**

Here, you can monitor your out-of-stock rates and average time-to-sell metrics and gain a clear insight into the success of your goods sold within freshness dates or delivered on time and in full.

With the ability to interact with this powerful melting pot of data in one central location, you can get to the root of any glaring supply chain issues and fix them before they get out of control. Setting benchmarks and tracking trends will also improve your real-time decision-making while helping you make more strategic decisions based on your processes, stock management initiatives, and supplier relationships.

Primary KPIs:

  • Out of Stock Rate (OOF)
  • Delivered On-Time & In-Full (OTIF)
  • Average Time To Sell
  • Percentage of Sold Products Within Freshness Date

15. Production Dashboard

When it comes to keeping your production line or processes fluent and productive, inefficiency is your worst enemy. Driving end-to-end efficiency while responding to any snags or issues requires strategic thinking. That’s where our manufacturing dashboard comes into its own.

Manufacturing digital dashboard displaying main manufacturing KPIs to keep the pulse of your factory

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An essential platform for any aspiring digital dashboard business with production at its heart, here you can measure production volumes, downtime, and various costs over specific timeframes with ease. By working with this informational control center daily, you can hone in on any processes or machinery that are affecting your output while reducing unnecessary costs. 

As a result, you will save exponential amounts of time and money while optimizing the efficiency of your production department across the board.

Primary KPIs:

  • Production Volume
  • Production Downtime
  • Production Cost

16. Product Innovation Dashboard

As one of our most insightful examples, our production innovation tool sheds essential light on how well your products are actually performing in the eyes of your clients or consumers.

Market research digital dashboard displaying results on a survey for product innovation, useful for product development and pricing decisions

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Highly visual and equipped with a balanced mix of vital insights, this market research analytics tool will give you a true gauge of peoples’ willingness to pay for certain products as well as usage and purchase intention. You can also see which five products are selling or performing the best with a simple glance.

Equipped with this information, you can meet the needs of your audience and target market head-on while refining existing products to offer greater consumer value, develop brand-new offerings that are likely to offer a healthy ROI, or position your company as an industry leader (or both).

Primary KPIs:

  • Usage Intention
  • Purchase Intention
  • Willingness To Pay (WTP)

17. Zendesk Talk Dashboard

Zendesk is one of the world’s most extensive customer support platforms, giving businesses across industries the tools and information to deliver a seamless experience to their consumers across channels. But what if you could squeeze even more informational value from the platform and gain an edge on the competition?

Zendesk talk dashboard tracking metrics for the performance of a call center support team as an example of a digital dashboard

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With this template, you can drill down deeper into key Zendesk KPIs for customer support and gain quick access to call answer times, leg talk times, quality rates, and any inbound calls that are deemed unsuccessful.

Keeping on top of these vital metrics will empower you to improve your resolution rates and deal with more customer calls, compromising on quality. Plus, if you connect with any emerging issues, you can analyze the informational patterns to get to the heart of the issue (a technical glitch, poor call handling processes, or agents in need of more training, for instance) and make targeted improvements that will ultimately result in higher satisfaction rates.

Primary KPIs:

  • Answer Time
  • Leg Talk Time
  • Unsuccessful Inbound Calls
  • Quality Rate

18. Facebook Page Dashboard

Facebook remains one of the planet’s most popular and engaged social media networks, offering a treasure trove of promotional opportunities for brands and companies across every sector imaginable. If you handle the platform correctly, it will work wonders for your commercial growth.

Facebook page digital dashboard provides insights into all the important metrics on this social network

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Our Facebook-centric tool has everything you need to maximize the success, engagement, and reach of your paid and organic content in specific regions or across particular demographics.

Here, you can view your top page view sources, drill down into page actions, break down your fans or followers into age or gender segments, and track your growth in different countries. This perfect storm of visuals will empower you to manage your paid social budget more effectively, craft content that sparks engagement in specific regions, and publish posts when your audience is most likely to engage - a recipe for social success.

Primary KPIs:

  • Number of Fans
  • Follower Demographics
  • Page Views by Sources
  • Actions on Page

19. HR Diversity Dashboard 

Diversity has become a requirement in organizations of all sizes, not only because society started demanding diversity in the workplace but also because decision-makers have realized the power of having employees with different backgrounds, ethnicities, and genders. That being said, to hire and maintain your diverse talent, you need to ensure your company offers a positive and equalitarian environment.  Our next example helps the HR department track all details of their diversity initiatives. 

HR digital dashboard template tracking diversity KPIs

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Our insightful diversity template offers HR executives a 360-view of all aspects of their diverse workforce. From the share of gender and ethnicity employees by each department to the turnover rate by diversity group, the HR team will be able to extract valuable information to keep their employees satisfied and their business as diverse as possible. 

The recruitment breakdown by ethnicity and gender is probably one of the most valuable graphs presented in this digital dashboard example. It can help you understand if you are being partial and offering everyone the same opportunities during recruitment regardless of their race or gender. 

Primary KPIs: 

  • Turnover Rate
  • Female to Male Ratio
  • Part-Time Employees
  • Average Time Stay

20. IT Cybersecurity Dashboard 

As mentioned earlier in the challenges section, cybersecurity has become a top priority for businesses as the rate of attacks increases at a concerning pace. Therefore, organizations need to invest money and time in the right tools and strategies to keep security risks at a minimum. Our IT dashboard offers a weekly view of different KPIs that help the IT department track and optimize its cybersecurity strategies. 

Cybersecurity KPIs tracked in a professional IT digital dashboard template

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The template starts by offering a quick view of 4 critical performance indicators. Each of them is compared to the development of the previous 6 months to help the team understand if they are making improvements. There, we can see that while the mean time to resolve is lower, the mean time to detect is higher, which means attackers might have enough time to do some damage before the IT team discovers the issue. That is something that needs to be improved as soon as possible. 

Another valuable data offered in this template is the phishing test success rate chart. The IT department carries out phishing tests to test if employees are likely to click on a suspicious email. Doing these tests can help find weaknesses and train employees to tackle them. 

Primary KPIs:

  • Cyber Security Rating
  • Amount of Intrusion Times
  • Mean Time to Detect
  • Backup Frequency
  • Phishing Test Success Rate

21. COO KPI Dashboard 

Our last template has a KPI scorecard format, and it tracks four relevant sections for the COO or chief operating officer. The areas are distribution and transport, order management, inventory, and finances. Each metric displayed on this template is compared to last week's performance and complemented with a 10-week trend line. With all this information in hand, the COO can ensure efficient operations with the highest return. 

COO digital dashboard example tracking metrics for distribution and transport, order management, inventory, and finances

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As mentioned above, the value of this logistics analytics dashboard lies mostly in the use of performance targets. By comparing the development of the current and the previous periods, logistics teams can evaluate the success of their strategies and spot any issues before they become bigger. For instance, we can see that the distribution and transport section is underperforming in almost all KPIs compared to the previous week. Whether these values are really affecting the business will depend on their goals and what they expect from the current week. However, it is important to keep a close eye on it to avoid any unexpected drops. 

Primary KPIs: 

  • Dwell Time
  • Inventory Carrying Costs
  • Operating Ratio
  • Order Cycle Time
  • Trailer Utilization Rate

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Digital Dashboards Takeaways

We’ve considered how to define a “digital dashboard” in a practical context, explored the key benefits as well as best practices, and showcased a powerful mix of real-world examples. During our journey, it’s become abundantly clear that there is everything to gain from using these dynamic business intelligence tools to your advantage.

Interactive, intuitive, and informational dashboards in a fast-paced commercial environment will not only boost your internal intelligence but also offer everyone within your organization a level of insight that will foster better performance and efficiency, more cohesive internal communications, and more efficient operational processes across the board.

Dashboards of the modern variety are vital to commercial success and are the very best tools for presenting your intelligence in a way that will return actionable results - the kind that will help you make real waves in your niche while remaining adaptable in an ever-changing commercial environment. 

Embrace the power of dashboards today, and you’ll reap endless commercial rewards tomorrow - now’s the time to strike. 

For more insight into data-driven tools for your organization and how to use them to propel your organization ahead of the pack one insight at a time, read our essential guide to getting started with business performance dashboards.

If you want to create your own dashboards and take your organization to the next level, try our dynamic dashboard software for a 14-day trial, completely free!