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Recently, in a discussion with a client, he was mentioning that their data analysis is mostly exporting the monthly reports from their different tools and analyzing it on excel. Every month they follow the same process and append the monthly reports to this document. Every department does the same process of collating data from their day-to-day tools and analyzing it on excel. This process has been continuing ever since the origin of the company and they plan to continue this till they hire a data analyst who will save them from this hassle.
Why do we need pre-designed dashboards?
The cost and effort, is one of the main reasons why small players, are not embracing analytics. The very thought of analytics brings to mind a data scientist to perform the task. They would either need to hire a data scientist or identify someone within the team to do the job. Having a dedicated person to setup and maintain the analytics is holding them back. To save this effort and additional cost, most organizations either do basic data analysis for each tool/department, which eventually rests only with that department.
Though excel is a very powerful tool, not everyone is knowledgeable to slice and dice the data to get the desired business metrics required for their specific business. Same is the case with other, opensource and self-service BI analytic tools. Thought these tools are highly powerful, and it might seem interesting to create a dashboard from scratch playing with all the KPI formulas. It is not always as fun as it seems. Its a tedious task to integrate and process the data. You need lot of skill and effort. Also, the cost in maintaining and training the team is another factor. This is where pre-canned dashboards are a life-saver. They do not require a data analyst for setup and maintenance, neither do they require training. You can visualize your raw data in a structured manner on pre-designed dashboards.
How pre-canned dashboards are a lifesaver?
These pre-canned dashboards, provide standardized templates which provide a dynamic representation of your metrics. They have these metrics handpicked, based on industry standards, customer case studies and other use cases. These are metrics that matter the most to your organization. Visualization of your metrics is through simple and easy to decrypt graphs. Your involvement is required only for the data source integration with the dashboard application. Once the initial task of integrating the dashboard with the data source is complete, which is a pretty quick task. Your data will automatically populate on your dashboard. You can relax and enjoy your metrics.
These pre-canned dashboards, act as an interface between you and your data sources. The dashboards can be designed such that the data always rests on your system. You do not have to store or copy your data on the analytical tool. Hence, your data is secure and under your full ownership at any point.
You can access these dashboards at any time to view your key performance indicators real-time, as well as historic data. You no-longer need a data scientist for your data analytics. Along with that it ensures that data does not rest in the hands of just the data scientist or the IT team. Anytime, any meeting your team can come prepared with their data and take well informed decisions. They can utilize the time they spent on collating and working on this data on other productive work. These pre-designed dashboards thus reduce time and effort as well as promote data democratization within the team.
