preview

Business Intelligence Dashboard Best Practices

Decent Essays

After reviewing the internship activity in chapter 12, “Industry: Healthcare” and completing independent online research, I have found helpful information on Business Intelligence dashboard best practices. As stated in the internship activity “Dashboards are a popular way to view business data” (Rainer, Prince, & Cegielski, 2014). In fact, Stephen Few sums up the definition of Business Intelligence dashboard in this sentence “A dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance” (Lach, 2012). BI dashboards are a delivery method used to share information with appointed users or a number of individuals …show more content…

Doing this will bring users to the most important pieces of information located on the dashboard. When doing this it is key to avoid clutter, such as visibly unnecessary chart types. With any unnecessary information or visuals it can distract and turn the users away from the data being shown. A practice that goes along with this is using “color appropriately and sparingly to achieve maximum contrast” (Lach, 2012). When designing a dashboard of reports the color selection should be thought out to enhance readability of charts. The precise selection and use of color will help bring the users’ attention to the significant trends, developments, and actions. Making data points different from one another and from the charts and backgrounds will help the important information be seen. On the other hand, if there are too many colors being used it can be hard to find and grasp the information. A cool trick is to relate colors to their symbolic or metaphoric meaning, such as red equals bad. Another practice is to select the best visualizations, not the best looking visualizations. Imagery should be kept simple and the focus should be on the data not the dashboard. Too flashy visuals and chart types should not be used when there are simpler alternatives for users to understand the same message. When designing, the dashboard context should always be provided. If there is no context, then the data visuals presented are basically useless. Finally, dashboards should have support and prompt action. “After drilling to detail to ascertain the root cause of a notable change or event, users must be enabled with a range of options to share the new information and their associated thoughts with others, in order to drive appropriate resultant action” (Lach, 2012). BI dashboards should be effective and efficient for businesses to view their data. These are the best BI dashboard practices I have researched that will

Get Access