{"id":1777,"date":"2018-08-22T11:03:51","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T11:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/special-sauce.tech\/etabs-wordpress\/?post_type=newsevents&amp;p=1777"},"modified":"2018-08-22T11:03:51","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T11:03:51","slug":"it-does-what-it-says-on-the-tin","status":"publish","type":"newsevents","link":"https:\/\/special-sauce.dev\/etabs-block\/newsevents\/it-does-what-it-says-on-the-tin\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;It Does What It Says On The Tin&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1><strong>\u201cIt does what it says on the tin\u201d<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>We explain the importance of a dashboard and share our tips on how to make sure your dashboards are effectively integrated within your organisation.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s true to say when a dashboard is done right, it quickly becomes indispensable within the organisation and often is the central hub which works across departments and teams. The most successful dashboard projects I\u2019ve worked on are the ones which hit the right tone, are well planned and are built with a clear idea of their intention and their audience.\u00a0 A dashboard can elevate your key findings and allow the company to collectively make better decisions faster than before.\u00a0 To do this, a dashboard needs to have a clear direction in terms of the measures shown and the overall message.\u00a0 Interactivity allows all this data to be available at a couple of clicks or swipes on a tablet \u2013 instantly available to see and interrogate to answer questions and queries.<\/p>\n<p>To make sure your dashboards are effectively integrated within your organisation, there are several key areas which are critical to ensuring success.\u00a0 In this first article, we\u2019re going to be going through the planning stages and the information that you need to make sure your dashboard does exactly what it says \u2018on the tin!\u2019<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Know your audience<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Firstly, it is imperative that you know exactly who your intended audience is.<\/p>\n<p>The best dashboard projects are the ones where it\u2019s clear who will be using it.<\/p>\n<p>Is the dashboard for a CEO who just wants the key factors straight away, or perhaps an insight team where they want to interrogate the data and spending hours trawling over the dashboard?\u00a0 Is the viewer research literate? What level of expertise do they have in the project and the data itself?<\/p>\n<p>I remember working with an insight team \u2013 creating quite a huge dashboard with all the information in there, question text, bases etc.\u00a0 From a researchers perspective, it was a good dashboard.\u00a0 However, it was intended for a non-research audience and the viewers were totally put off by the fact that it was \u2018too researchy.\u2019\u00a0 It might be that you eventually have to create a couple of different versions to accommodate for different audiences \u2013 but it is critical to know who the intended audience is.<\/p>\n<p>From my experience, the best approach is to start simple \u2013 things can always be built up in terms of extra functionality etc., rather than scaled back.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Know how they will view the dashboard<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So having established who is going to be viewing the dashboard \u2013 it would be worth at this stage to ascertain how they are going to view the dashboard.<\/p>\n<p>Will it be the big boss viewing it on his tablet when he commutes into work, or a salesperson quickly finding the latest figures on their smartphone?<\/p>\n<p>This type of information can quickly speed up the dashboard\u2019s deployment as if you know how it\u2019s going to be viewed \u2013 it means you can build it to those specifics.\u00a0 Rather than publishing it and the first response you get is \u2018I can\u2019t read any of the numbers when I look at it on my iPhone!\u2019 \u2013 believe me, this has happened on more than one occasion to me! Also, an understanding of any IT security issues at this stage can help, for example, does the company have a block on certain websites or some sort of proxy server?\u00a0 Identifying the technology barriers at the early stage can save weeks in the process!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Know the project<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sounds a bit obvious, but I have known countless people who start building a dashboard and go off making a beautiful visual but the type of data they need to use behind the dashboard doesn\u2019t fit with their \u2018vision.\u2019 Knowing what pieces of information you want to \u2018dashboard\u2019 is the first starting point.<\/p>\n<p>Most dashboards I\u2019ve built, tended to be more KPI lead \u2013 almost summarizing an entire project rather than giving every single data point \u2013 again, it\u2019s dependent on the intended audience, you wouldn\u2019t bamboozle the CEO with every data point in a brand tracker, but you would provide them with the KPIs and whether these have increased or decreased etc.<\/p>\n<p>Also, it is important at this stage to discover how often the dashboard needs to be refreshed.\u00a0 Do they want it updated every week, every month or real time? If you didn\u2019t know, you could assume they wanted real time data, when in fact they just want it updated monthly!<\/p>\n<h3>IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO SOMEONE ABOUT DASHBOARDS, PLEASE FILL OUT THE FORM BELOW AND WE\u2019LL BE IN TOUCH.<\/h3>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" id=\"aoform-script-083bd5ee-a68b-492d-ba90-79391c27da22:d-0001\">!function(o,t,e,a){o._aoForms=o._aoForms||[],o._aoForms.push(a);var n=function(){var o=t.createElement(e);o.src=(\"https:\"==t.location.protocol?\"https:\/\/\":\"http:\/\/\")+\"info.e-tabs.com\/acton\/content\/form_embed.js\",o.async=!0;for(var a=t.getElementsByTagName(e)[0],n=a.parentNode,c=document.getElementsByTagName(\"script\"),r=!1,s=0;s<c.length;s++){if(c[s].getAttribute(\"src\")==o.getAttribute(\"src\"))r=!0;}r?typeof(_aoFormLoader)!=\"undefined\"?_aoFormLoader.load({id:\"083bd5ee-a68b-492d-ba90-79391c27da22:d-0001\",accountId:\"30337\",domain:\"info.e-tabs.com\",isTemp:false,noStyle:false,prefill:false}):\"\":n.insertBefore(o,a)};window.attachEvent?window.attachEvent(\"onload\",n):window.addEventListener(\"load\",n,!1),n()}(window,document,\"script\",{id:\"083bd5ee-a68b-492d-ba90-79391c27da22\",accountId:\"30337\",domain:\"info.e-tabs.com\",isTemp:false,noStyle:false,prefill:false});<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2790,"featured_media":1778,"template":"","class_list":["post-1777","newsevents","type-newsevents","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","newseventstags-online-dashboards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/special-sauce.dev\/etabs-block\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsevents\/1777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/special-sauce.dev\/etabs-block\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsevents"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/special-sauce.dev\/etabs-block\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/newsevents"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/special-sauce.dev\/etabs-block\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/special-sauce.dev\/etabs-block\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsevents\/1777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/special-sauce.dev\/etabs-block\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/special-sauce.dev\/etabs-block\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}