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Is your analytical dashboard still providing valuable insights? A once-useful analytical dashboard can quickly become irrelevant. Don’t let outdated data and ineffective visualizations hold you back. Learn how to spot the warning signs of a stale analytical dashboard with these 6 red flags.
Warning signs of a stale Analytical Dashboard
An Analytical Dashboard provides a clear picture of data in service. Having a running service-line dashboard provides insights to efficiently drive a business. However, troubleshooting your dashboard may hinder most of your operations. You will be unable to figure out the story behind your data and struggle to make your work run smoothly. This happens due to stopping or altering tools within a dashboard because they’re outdated.
These are the key signs that your dashboard is outdated:
- It displays static data from the source.
- It takes time to load information.
- There’s a drop in dashboard functioning and AI features.
- Incomplete data is displayed.
- There’s a reduction in ideas generated from dashboard graphics.
- Technical changes cause delayed data or errors.
1. It displays static data from the source.
When your dashboard begins to provide static data, your dashboard needs an update. You will realize this when your dashboard takes in data from the database or source but cannot process it in the moment, or when it leads to wrong analysis. Thus, resources are wasted on a particular task.
2. It takes time to load information.
The dashboard taking too much time loading data from the server indicates the need for an update. It may be one of the signs of a slow API response or dashboard connection affecting data rendering or showing errors.
3. There’s a drop in dashboard functioning and AI features.
Some of the tools for customization may drop in performance or concurrently run without any configuration to produce a single result that is hard to compare to make a decision. This affects the function of AI features that enable the dashboard to convey information, impacting its ability to report accurate data.
4. Incomplete data is displayed.
A dashboard displaying cut images or incomplete charts and graphs signifies that it needs improvement. This is because the operation has been reduced due to the developer’s time frame, which means it needs an update. Sometimes the information may appear blurry, and you cannot gain any insight to apply to your business. When optimized, an update can be made to correct a specific issue or widget to help the dashboard display all the data faster at once.
5. There’s a reduction in ideas generated from dashboard graphics.
Does your dashboard summarize your data, generate ideas, or provide metrics and KPIs that yield insights? If it has reduced any of those, or stopped them altogether, you need to upgrade the dashboard to visualize correct data.
6. Technical changes cause delayed data or errors.
Technical changes are key to maintaining and improving dashboard functionality for rendering and displaying data in widgets. But when such changes are done, the dashboard tends to respond slowly, or an error occurs in the process of fetching data from the source. This signifies the need for a refresh to update changes swiftly.
Worried about what to do next? We have you covered. Have all your data at your fingertips, including real-time data, with a timely update of your dashboard. Run through the following information for the solution to your business dashboards!
Benefits of updating your analytics dashboard
With an updated dashboard, you will enjoy the following benefits:
1. Improved decision-making
When you have new features in your dashboard, you will gain more interactive features and ideas to help you understand the conveyed data and make decisions accordingly for the betterment of the business.
2. Time management
In an updated dashboard, you will save time when loading or designing it because its speed will increase. Also, connecting to other data sources, like SQL, and collaborating with other teams will achieve each goal faster.
3. Increase accurate, actionable analytics
With the new updates, data from the user database will be fully displayed as expected. A user will be able to visualize information keenly and do proper analysis to accurately perform data-driven choice of actions.
4. Advance data evaluation
An updated dashboard keeps you informed of your data to help you evaluate it before putting it into practice. This helps select compatible information to complete each task seamlessly.
5. Provision of meaningful reports
An updated dashboard provides data ready for application to your business. You can simply select a piece of detailed information from your dashboard to develop your business and keep a steadily progressing graph for your productivity.
How to improve and keep a dashboard up to date
First, identify the problem, evaluate it, separate it, if possible, then work on it. In this process, new features will be installed.
After updating the dashboard, you need to improve its efficiency. Follow these steps:
1. Erase the widgets that had errors conveying data
Removing the problematic widgets and restarting the design process supports the data configured in and the dashboard itself. Also, clear the cache to remove all data traces to avoid risk affecting your new installation.
2. Re-examining newly designed metrics per expectation
Recheck the new design related to the need of the use case. This will help you know its performance and determine whether the change is worthwhile. Check the update to see if it is compatible with your business.
3. Schedule trial time to observe the performance of the update
Plan a period to monitor the function of the newly updated features and metrics. This will determine the implications being prevailed by the new widgets, leading to improvements to take the right actions to keep your dashboard running. Keep stats for each session and compare the variables. If the dashboard runs orderly and progressively as expected, then its goal has been achieved.
4. Observe your dashboard’s display
See whether your KPIs and metrics are readable. Can you see the actions reflected per the data rendered? If it is visible as a whole, and you can draw some hints of operation, then it is fine to interact with the data.
5. Refresh the whole dashboard to see how it’s displaying information in general
When done with all the updates, refresh the whole dashboard to fully insert those updates. You will be able to see the entire dashboard display the data that will help you make the right conclusion.
Start Embedding Powerful Analytics
Try out all the features of Bold BI with 15-day free trial.
Bold BI helps keep your dashboard updated through its data refresh feature, enabling your dashboard data to refresh automatically. It also lets you schedule refreshes for the whole dashboard or specific widgets at regular intervals.
With a free 15-day trial, you can sign up to Bold BI and create your own interactive business intelligence dashboards. If you already have an account, you can log in to get access to Bold BI.
