The Pros and Cons of Dashboards

Software design has taken over the corporate world and other industries, including retail, food, and construction. Many companies worldwide are employing software design to make their operations much more efficient, allowing them to grow more significantly in revenue and profit. 

Another thing that can help enterprises is the use of software dashboards. These dashboards are equally crucial tools, as they assist developers and business runners keep track of all their data and insights. Software dashboards allow them to peek inside the running of numerous software, persisting errors, and things that can be done differently. 

This article will explore software dashboards in much more detail, highlighting their pros and cons and listing some of the best ones to use in 2022, so stay tuned. 

What Are Software Dashboards?

Software dashboards are considered one of the best information management tools, allowing users to view and analyze how their business is doing. These dashboards use customizable and interactive data to let users know how efficient is their software. The business’s health can be easily monitored through software dashboards, and many enterprises worldwide have started deploying them for everyday use. 

Software dashboards are a must-have in 2022, especially if you’re running a business. These tools featuring informative graphs and charts will let you know how to be more efficient in your operations. These tools will provide profound insights regarding what needs to be done differently to earn higher profits. If you use this technology, consider your business successful in the future. 

Types of Dashboards

When you’re about to implement a software dashboard in your company, you must go through the different types of dashboards to know which one you should deploy. Digital dashboards are hugely talked about these days, considering their benefits. 

Desktop Software Application

A desktop software application can be run on a standalone computer without an internet connection. It allows users to view information on their desktop through the software installed on their computer. Desktop software applications come in handy when there’s no availability of a solid internet connection, as they allow people to look at statistical information that can benefit their business. 

Web Browser-Based Applications

These applications do the same job as desktop software applications. The only difference is that they’re not installed on the desktop and need a steady internet connection to be used properly. Numerous software is run through web browsers to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and analyze consumer traffic through these applications. Such applications sometimes provide more precise insights than web-browser-based applications. 

Desktop Applications 

You might think these applications are the same as desktop software applications; however, there’s a difference. The most significant difference distinguishing the two is the need for an internet connection to run the application. While desktop software applications do not require one and can be run efficiently, at the same time, desktop applications are only practical with a steady internet connection. 

Quality Criteria of Software Dashboards

An excellent software dashboard must have qualities that make them stand out and help enterprises achieve maximum efficiency. The following are those few qualities. 

Simplicity 

Even though dashboards require technology, they should be simple and easy to understand. A complex dashboard will throw companies off completely, preventing them from understanding valuable data and information to get insights. 

Accessible 

Another quality a suitable dashboard should have is accessibility. Its audience or users should quickly be able to access the dashboard whenever they want. If it becomes challenging, the dashboard won’t be helpful to its intended users. 

Usefulness

Finally, an excellent dashboard must be helpful for enterprises by providing meaningful data they can use to improve their operations and performance. Dashboards aim to help decision-makers stay on top of things and focus on areas of improvement. 

Pros of a Software Dashboard 

Glancing at KPIs

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are crucial to analyze now and then to understand how business is doing. Luckily, monitoring KPIs is no longer a hassle because of software dashboards. Enterprises can quickly view their KPIs through visual data on their dashboards to see how well they’re doing and where they need to improve. Your software dashboard will combine all information from social media, website traffic, CRM, ERP, etc., to help you know the state of your company. 

Real-Time Updates 

Real-time updates can be a game changer for a company, as they allow you to know what happens every second. Think how easy life would be if you won’t have to manually input data every five or ten minutes. Real-time dashboards automatically freshen themselves and update data, helping users know the change in activity. Real-time updates can genuinely help business runners stay on top of things as much as possible by knowing every tiny detail. 

Flexibility 

Technology has made life much more convenient for everyone, including business runners. If you’re running a company, you will undoubtedly feel the need to have everything in the palm of your hands to stay on track. Fortunately, software dashboards now come with accessible SaaS solutions to help you access your dashboard anywhere in the world. All you would require is a stable internet connection, and you can track all kinds of data through any gadget or device - eliminating the immobility factor. 

Data-Driven Culture

If you want your enterprise to become bigger than it is, you will have to be more productive. That will also require your employees to jump on the bandwagon, helping your company achieve maximum efficiency. When you introduce something such as a software dashboard in your company, everyone will profit from the data, giving everyone a clear direction on how to move forward. That will also help you in smoother decision-making, better productivity, and enhanced flow of operations. 

Increased Efficiency 

As a business runner, you won’t be unfamiliar with the concept of improving efficiency to earn higher profits. If your business isn’t doing well in the market, you must ask yourself, what are you doing wrong? The answer would probably be that you aren’t deploying enough resources to free time from manual tasks to focus on other things. This is a significant reason your enterprise isn’t meeting the required efficiency. Hence, automation of data, a data-driven culture, and wiser allocation of technological resources will help you increase efficiency. 

Exposure to Smart Features

You should know by now that a software dashboard will allow you to be surrounded by nothing but intelligent features. When technology can provide you with game-changing data insights, allowing you to take the appropriate actions, that’s when you’ll know how beneficial software dashboards are. If a blunder occurs, your dashboard will warn you immediately, and you can take corrective measures to fix the errors immediately. These dashboards can help your company meet its goals in no time, given how modern and technical their features are. 

Cons of Software Dashboards

Excessive Real-Time Errors

As mentioned earlier, dashboards can be beneficial as they present real-time data. However, that may not always be the case. Real-time upgrades may sometimes have persisting bugs that might not be visible to fix. That can prevent business runners from implementing a proactive incident management strategy. Real-time upgrades can be highly crucial to an enterprise, and their lack can lead to numerous other problems or blunders. 

Historical Data Presentation 

Enterprises rely on information provided by dashboards to smoothen their operations and improve efficiency. However, business runners do not realize that dashboards only provide present information, not future predictions. 

While this may be helpful to business runners in the short term, they still won’t have accurate information to rely on for the future. The KPIs that dashboards track are merely assumptions based on current scenarios. 

No Consideration for Smaller Issues

Small issues still need to be addressed, even when small, and many dashboards don’t spot it. A minor issue may not seem consequential, but it can negatively impact a business. Even the most minor issues can contribute to the business’s failure. These issues are often lost among other KPIs and are, thus, challenging to spot. Such incidents might affect just one business component, but that component can change the whole game for the company. 

Lack of Correlation 

CEO dashboards are those that higher-level executives or CEOs use to track data and gain insights. When using such a dashboard, the user must add valuable metrics to get the appropriate information regarding business performance. Choosing such metrics can be challenging, as there are too many, and only the most practical ones must be selected. Also, such metrics might lack correlation, affecting the quality of the actionable insights provided by the dashboard. 

False Positives

A dashboard will provide you with all kinds of information regarding your enterprise. However, the data may sometimes be too cluttered to make sense of, often delivering false numbers. Also, a significant issue many users might find with dashboards is differentiating between valuable and useless data. Since a dashboard will provide numerous alerts, it might be time-taking to understand which information should be considered and which should be ignored. 

Lack of Prioritization

A dashboard will deliver several insights based on the metrics you feed. The real problem arises when the time for analysis comes. Dashboards’ only purpose is to provide information; you, the user, must add filters only to get the information crucial to your company. This lack of intelligent prioritization may be one of the most significant drawbacks of software dashboards. You must run your analyses and fully use the insights you get from the dashboard. 

Best Software Dashboards to Use in 2022

Since you’re all caught up on the pros and cons of software dashboards, we’ve compiled a list of the best dashboards you might find adequate for your company. These dashboards will provide you with the most valuable insights, helping you expand your enterprise by improving quality, efficiency, and productivity. 

Domo

The first dashboard to make it on the list is Domo. It’s an effective tool to know all the necessary information for your business. Domo uses creative and visual charts and graphs to depict helpful data to make you aware of what’s happening with your company and where you can improve. Numerous companies have deployed this effective software dashboard to study their KPIs, as Domo gets the job done perfectly. 

Looker

Another dashboard to make it to the list of best dashboards is Looker. If you’re looking for actionable insights, Looker is your ultimate solution. This dashboard combines all valuable data through visual representation techniques and will help you track your KPIs in no time. If you want to stay on top of things and improve your business operations, Looker is what you’re looking for. This dashboard offers numerous solutions to your problems and is easy to use. 

Dundas

Dundas is another dashboard you should keep an eye out for. This dashboard has won numerous industry awards for being one of the market’s most valuable and effective dashboards. Its business intelligence is undoubtedly unmatched, as it offers customized data analytics. Recently, Dundas has undergone some upgrades, becoming even better than before. The enhancements include Linux support and NLP functionality. Hence, we suggest you consider Dundas when shopping for dashboards. 

Yellowfin

Last but not least, Yellowfin is one of the key players in the dashboard market. Its most significant benefit is that it offers numerous language generation for international users. Now, this is a quality not all dashboards have. Additionally, Yellowfin offers quality insights that can help business runners track data and use it fully to better their business performance. It provides excellent functionality and enhanced augmentation for a much better user experience.  

Final Thoughts

We discussed how a dashboard works and the numerous benefits they offer. Software dashboards have entirely changed the game for companies, helping them go a notch higher to achieve more efficacy and efficiency in their business operations. Decision makers can take a glance at KPIs that get updated in real-time. 

On the flip side, dashboards may obfuscate one’s understanding of current performance. They may overlook minor issues that can become larger issues affecting the business. They may also misrepresent metrics due to errors. It’s also possible that they result in the leaking of classified information. Hence, users must work with dashboards with discretion.