Two Data Presentation Tools

1. Report - a static collection of data given to stakeholders periodically.

• Pros
  • High-level historical data
  • Easy to design
  • Pre-cleaned and sorted data
• Cons
  • Continual maintenance
  • Less visually appealing
  • Static

2. Dashboard - monitors live, incoming data.

• Pros
  • Dynamic, automatic, and interactive
  • More stakeholder access
  • Low maintenance
• Cons
  • Labor-intensive design
  • Can be confusing
  • Potentially uncleaned data

Pivot table - a data summarization tool that is used in data processing. Pivot tables are used to summarize, sort, re-organize, group, count, total, or average data stored in a database.

Question

A dashboard would be most beneficial for which of the following scenarios?

• A cross functional team needs an ad-hoc update.
• An analyst needs a summary of data upon request.
• A project manager needs to monitor data as it becomes available.
• A consultant needs all historical data for an audit.

Correct. A dashboard would be useful for monitoring data as it becomes available.

Data versus metrics

Metric - single, quantifiable type of data that can be used for measurement

• Metrics can be used to help calculate customer retention rates, or a company's ability to keep its customers over time.

Metric goal - a measurable goal set by a company and evaluated using metrics

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Designing compelling dashboards

The beauty of dashboards

Dashboards are powerful visual tools that help you tell your data story. A dashboard organizes information from multiple datasets into one central location, offering huge time-savings. Data analysts use dashboards to track, analyze, and visualize data in order to answer questions and solve problems. For a basic idea of what dashboards look like, refer to this article: 6 real-world examples of business intelligence dashboards. Tableau is one tool that is used to create dashboards and is covered later in the program.

The following table summarizes the benefits of using a dashboard for both data analysts and their stakeholders.

Benefits	For Data Analysts	For Stakeholders
Centralization	Sharing a single source of data with all stakeholders	Working with a comprehensive view of data, initiatives, objectives, projects, processes, and more
Visualization	Showing and updating live, incoming data in real time (a)	Spotting changing trends and patterns more quickly
Insightfulness	Pulling relevant information from different datasets	Understanding the story behind the numbers to keep track of goals and make data-driven decisions
Customization	Creating custom views dedicated to a specific person, project, or presentation of the data	Drilling down to more specific areas of specialized interest or concern

• (a) It is important to remember that changed data is pulled into dashboards automatically only if the data structure is the same. If the data structure changes, you have to update the dashboard design before the data can update live.

Creating a dashboard

Here is a process you can follow to create a dashboard:

1. Identify the stakeholders who need to see the data and how they will use it

To get started with this, you need to ask effective questions. Check out this Requirements Gathering Worksheet to explore a wide range of good questions you can use to identify relevant stakeholders and their data needs. This is a great resource to help guide you through this process again and again.

2. Design the dashboard (what should be displayed)

Use these tips to help make your dashboard design clear, easy to follow, and simple:

• Use a clear header to label the information
• Add short text descriptions to each visualization
• Show the most important information at the top

3. Create mock-ups if desired

This is optional, but a lot of data analysts like to sketch out their dashboards before creating them.

4. Select the visualizations you will use on the dashboard

You have a lot of options here and it all depends on what data story you are telling. If you need to show a change of values over time, line charts or bar graphs might be the best choice. If your goal is to show how each part contributes to the whole amount being reported, a pie or donut chart is probably a better choice.

To learn more about choosing the right visualizations, check out Looker’s short course on designing great dashboards. Just sign up and you can access the full tutorial for free. You can also visit Tableau’s galleries:

• For more samples of area charts, column charts, and other visualizations, visit Tableau’s Viz Gallery. This gallery is full of great examples that were created using real data; explore this resource on your own to get some inspiration.
• Explore Tableau’s Viz of the Day to see visualizations curated by the community. These are visualizations created by Tableau users and are a great way to learn more about how other data analysts are using data visualization tools.

5. Create filters as needed

Filters show certain data while hiding the rest of the data in a dashboard. This can be a big help to identify patterns while keeping the original data intact. It is common for data analysts to use and share the same dashboard, but manage their part of it with a filter. To dig deeper into filters and find an example of filters in action, you can visit Tableau’s page on Filter Actions. This is a useful resource to save and come back to when you start practicing using filters in Tableau on your own.

Dashboards are part of a business journey

Just like how the dashboard on an airplane shows the pilot their flight path, your dashboard does the same for your stakeholders. It helps them navigate the path of the project inside the data. If you add clear markers and highlight important points on your dashboard, users will understand where your data story is headed. Then, you can work together to make sure the business gets where it needs to go.

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Self-Reflection: Dive deeper into dashboards

Benefits of a dashboard

Previously, you were introduced to the data management tool known as a dashboard. In short, a dashboard is a single point of access for managing a business's information. It allows people to pull key information from data at a glance by visualizing the data in a way that makes things obvious or easy to understand.

In this activity, you’ll examine a few different kinds of dashboards and consider how they are used by data analysts and their teams.

Q1. Reflection

Before we go on, in the box below brainstorm any benefits that a company might gain from using a dashboard. Also, write 2-3 sentences (40-60 words) outlining an example of a data source a company might use with a dashboard, and how they would benefit from it.

There are numerous benefits to a company that can be provided by a dashboard, such as:

• Track historical and current performance
• Establish both long-term and/or short-term goals
• Define key performance indicators or metrics
• Identify potential issues or points of inefficiency

Q2. Reflection

Make a list or write 2-3 sentences (40-60 words) with examples of industries or businesses that could benefit from using dashboards more than others.

While almost every company can benefit in some way from using a dashboard, larger companies and companies with a wider range of products or services will likely benefit more. Companies operating in volatile, or swiftly changing markets like marketing, sales, and tech also tend to benefit more.

Types of dashboards

Often, businesses will tailor a dashboard for a specific purpose. The three most common categories are:

1. Strategic: Focuses on long term goals and strategies at the highest level of metrics
2. Operational: Short-term performance tracking and intermediate goals
3. Analytical: Consists of the datasets and the mathematics used in these sets

Let’s go into more detail about these three kinds of dashboards.

Strategic dashboards

A wide range of businesses use strategic dashboards when evaluating and aligning their strategic goals. These dashboards provide information over the longest time frame — from a single financial quarter to years. They typically contain information that is useful for enterprise-wide decision-making. An example of such a dashboard is below, which focuses on key performance indicators (KPIs) over a year..

Operational dashboards

Operational dashboards are, arguably, the most common type of dashboard. Because these dashboards contain information on a time scale of days, weeks, or months, they can provide performance insight almost in real-time. This allows businesses to track and maintain their immediate operational processes in light of their strategic goals. The operational dashboard below focuses on customer service.

Resolutions are divided between first call resolution (61%) and unresolved calls (9%)

Analytical dashboards

Analytical dashboards contain the details involved in the usage, analysis, and predictions made by data scientists. Certainly the most technical category, analytic dashboards are usually created and maintained by data science teams and rarely shared with upper management as they can be very difficult to understand.

Contains Return on assets, wrong capital ratio, and balance sheet

Q3. Reflection

After examining these dashboard examples, write 2-3 sentences (40-60 words) explaining their similarities and differences.

A few commonalities in these examples include:

• Dashboards are visualizations. Visualizing data can be enormously valuable in understanding what the data really means.
• Each dashboard identifies relevant metrics that may be used to assess company performance.

As for differences, the most obvious one is the timeframe covered in each dashboard.  The operational dashboard has a timeframe of days and weeks, while the strategic dashboard displays the entire year. The analytic dashboard skips a specific timeframe and instead identifies and tracks the various KPIs that may be used in the assessment of strategic and operational goals.

Q4. Reflection

Think about the person you had your data conversation with previously and write 2-3 sentences (40-60 words) explaining what dashboard you would recommend for that person.

Dashboards can provide convenient access to information and analytics and are easy to use in collaboration. Moreover, they may be tailored to the specific needs of the businesses.

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Test your knowledge on following the evidence

TOTAL POINTS 4

Question 1

Fill in the blank: Pivot tables in data processing tools are used to _____ data.

• validate
• populate
• clean
• summarize

Correct. Pivot tables are used to summarize data.

Question 2

In data analytics, how are dashboards different from reports?

• Dashboards monitor live, incoming data from multiple datasets and organize the information into one central location. Reports are static collections of data.
• Dashboards provide a high-level presentation of historical data. Reports provide a more detailed presentation of live, interactive data.
• Dashboards are used to share updates with stakeholders only periodically. Reports give stakeholders continuous access to data.
• Dashboards contain static data. Reports contain data that is constantly changing.

Correct. Dashboards monitor live, incoming data from multiple datasets and organize the information into one central location. Reports are static collections of data.

Question 3

Describe the difference between data and metrics.

• Data can be used for measurement. Metrics cannot be used for measurement.
• Data is a collection of facts. Metrics are quantifiable data types used for measurement.
• Data is quantifiable and used for measurement. Metrics are unorganized collections of facts.
• Data is quantifiable. Metrics are unquantifiable.

Correct. Data is a collection of facts. Metrics are quantifiable data types used for measurement.

Question 4

Return on Investment (ROI) uses which of the following metrics in its definition?

• Supply and demand
• Inventory and units
• Profit and investment
• Sales and margin

Correct. Return on Investment (ROI) = Profit/Investment.