Yes, You Should Invest in a Data and Analytics Dashboard

Data and Analytics Dashboards shouldn't just be cool looking visualizations.

Business Intelligence, dashboards, and data visualization have become more and more popular over the past few years. The dataisbeautiful subreddit highlights complex visualizations, Tableau developers compete in the Iron Viz competition, and entire communities focus on helping other analysts turn data into stunning visualizations. However, despite living in a golden-age of data tools and dashboards, we often hear the same feedback: "I really haven't used it."

So where's the disconnect?

The problem occurs when developers create tools and visualizations for the sake of creating tools and visualizations. We've seen countless over-built dashboards that abandoned the end-users' requirements in exchange for the most hip diagram on Tableau Public or the most impressive use of parameters and sheet swapping. These features certainly add a wow-factor and impress end-users at first; however, they're typically overly complicated and don't really solve the initial problem. We have an epidemic of analysts producing tools that prioritize showing off their skills as opposed to solving problems and creating real value.

This shift from practicality to vanity has caused a lot of teams to move away from investing in analytical dashboards and tools; they've often waited months for a deliverable that doesn't solve their problem and costs a lot of money. However, when built properly, dashboards can not only answer your questions, but they can provide valuable insights that would have otherwise been missed.

A properly designed and built dashboard focuses on solving specific problems or providing specific insights. The key word here is "specific". Good dashboards have a purpose and are designed to fulfill a certain need; having a clear goal for a tool keeps everything concise and functional which helps with adoption. Without a stated purpose, these tools tend to expand beyond the original scope and become overly complicated with too many views.

So when working with developers, it's incredibly important that deliverables are clearly described and documented, and the dashboard has a specific purpose.

Quality dashboards are worth the investment.

When built properly, a quality dashboard provides tremendous value for organizations. Teams rely on data to make good decisions, and the worst thing that can happen is having the data but not being able to use it. Sales records, for example, can span millions of rows. Combine that with a marketing campaign or web analytics, and you're drowning in a sea of data.

If you're trying to pick a region for a new product launch, can you easily make that decision looking at a table of your sales history in a tool like Shopify? Not without some extra work. A sales dashboard can quickly identify trends by translating those rows of raw values into easy-to-interpret visualizations, and those visuals help guide your analysis so you can more efficiently come to a data-driven decision.

On top of showing sales data, a custom dashboard can integrate data from other tools and sources. Not only can you see which region has the most sales, but you could also add marketing data to see which channel has the highest engagement rate. Before you know it, you have your target market and know how to communicate with them. A purpose-driven dashboard shows you what you need to see in a simple and intuitive manner without useless fluff or features you don't need.

Outside of giving you the insights you need, a well-built dashboard saves you time by centralizing your data. Rather than going back and forth between different tools, you can go to a single place for everything you need. Many of our clients need to extract data for deeper analysis or regular reporting outside of their tools. For these cases, a dashboard can provide a tailored export page that has the data in the format the end-user needs. Export pages may not be the most interesting part of a dashboard, but they allow people to get exactly what they need when they need it.

If you were already aware of the benefits of a dashboard but are struggling with your adoption or aren't seeing your team use tools, there may be some other factors in play.

Why so many people don't see the promised return.

So you've spent the money and invested in a custom dashboard and dataset. The team that built everything for you promised better decisions, less time wrangling data, and incredible insights, but you've barely noticed a difference. Where's the return you were promised?

Assuming the dashboard was built properly and delivers on the requirements, a lot of adoption issues can be fixed with a few changes to how the team interacts with data.

People won't use something they don't understand. We've often seen analysts deliver tools without proper documentation and training for the end-users. With regular data users, lack of instructions or data dictionaries may not cause many problems; however, occasional users often have a hard time remembering how to use the tool. We once worked with a marketing team that had around 50 people on it and only 3 analysts. Everyone else used tools here and there to plan campaigns, but they mostly relied on the analysts to provide data and recommendations. With only 3 people, their data team was always short on capacity, and because the existing tools had no instructions or documentation, non-data people never used them. Once we consolidated a few tools and provided proper documentation, we saw a noticeable increase in tool usage along with positive feedback from members of that team.

Outside of understanding how a dashboard works, trust in the data poses a a big initial hurdle for many organizations. If a team isn't used to easily accessing and using their data, they may question it's validity and think it's too good to be true. An easy remedy for this situation is to demonstrate how the tool prepares the data and run the dashboard alongside existing reporting for the first few weeks or months. Not only does this tactic help your team understand what's going on, but it gives them the opportunity to trust and proof the dashboard without much risk because old analytics methods are still available. Trust is huge with data, and it's absolutely worth taking the time to build that trust in any new tool.

If you have solid documentation and data trust but still aren't seeing results, you might just need to give it some time. Integrating a dashboard or other data tools into everyday workflows can be challenging. It takes time for people to adjust to the change, and there can be some real growing pains associated with adoption. During the adoption phase, it's extremely important to communicate with people and try and understand reasons for not using the dashboard. If multiple people dislike or are struggling with the same thing, you may want to give that feedback to the developer for an update to the tool. Things as simple as missing filters or poorly labeled tables can really impact a tool's usability and may not be obvious for the analysts developing the dashboard.

When everything's right, dashboards provide awesome value.

As consultants, we encounter countless situations with our clients. Some teams are fairly mature with data, and others lack the simplest resources. Budget, capacity, time, or some combination of those things can all lead to teams deprioritizing data and analytics, and once something something shifts down on that priority list, it's hard to move it back up. However, we've seen some great success with clients that decided to give analytics a little more attention.

A recent project centered around creating better web analytics for a small government agency. They had Google Analytics 4, Google Ads, social media, and email metrics; however, none of their tools were connected, and they struggled to attribute marketing and communication activities to web performance. This team knew the importance of data and analytics, but their budget and capacity severely limited their ability to build anything out. Backcountry Draft created a low-cost central tool for them, and we saw immediate benefits.

Firstly, they were able to track marketing campaigns and directly attribute them to web performance. Because of their limited budget, this capability was huge for them. It allowed them to launch a paid campaign, track performance, and make quick adjustments to improve performance. If a particular channel underperformed, they could move budget from that channel into a more effective one. With tight budgets, every penny counts, and our tool helped them efficiently allocate money to have the greatest return.

In addition to supporting paid marketing, our dashboard help with social media and organic channels. Data played the largest role here. We built a custom dataset that combined everything from each source system and allowed us to display the impact of each social media post and email send on website performance. Making that connection between social media input against web performance output was a significant jump in capabilities for our client, and they were able to more strategically plan their communication schedule.

If you're interested in learning more about this project, we outlined everything in this case study.

How do you make all of this work for you?

Whether you already have a data and analytics dashboard or you're interested in having one built, communication is key to it's adoption and success. While rolling out any new tools, it's incredibly important to listen the needs of your team and be able to communicate that to the team building the tool (or understand those needs yourself if you're the builder). Communication between the builder and the users ensures the right features are included and requirements are fulfilled, and communication with your team ensures you understand any pain points or issues preventing adoption.

Knowing the problem that needs solving before commissioning a dashboard not only simplifies the build process but ensures that your tool will have purpose. Having a clear purpose and problem for the dashboard to solve plays an important role in making it work for you. Investing time and money into a dashboard for the sake of having a dashboard never works and often leads to overly complicated tools that nobody uses. If you already have a dashboard that doesn't have a clear job, maybe you should consider retiring it rather than trying to force a square peg through a round hole.

Finally, you need to have realistic expectations. A dashboard and custom dataset does a great job connecting, simplifying, and displaying data; however, it's not a magic key that'll fix severe data issues or a team that doesn't work well with data. Like most things, the more effort you put into the dashboard the better the outcome will be, and if take the time your team needs for a successful launch of a new tool, you can expect some great things. This process may include a lot of time spent writing instructions, meeting with individuals, and countless iterations of the dashboard, but when done right, it's worth every minute.

If you're thinking about building or working with a team to build a dashboard or custom dataset, Backcountry Draft can help. We've worked with clients all along the data spectrum from no tools or data strategy to massive corporations with entire departments focused on data management and would love to see where we could help your organization!

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