Real-time dashboards can be used company-wide to display business-critical data, company updates, and safety alerts and protocols. This is an effective way to ensure making informed decisions, promote a healthier and safer workspace, and keep all your team on the same page.
These are just some of the advantages that introducing a live-data dashboard can bring to an organisation. Brought about by digital signage solutions, this modern means of real-time data visualisation has multiple possible applications and corresponding gains.
In this blog, we will focus on the main benefits and examples of real-time dashboards. After reading it, you will have a clear idea of the various uses and potential challenges in implementing a live-data dashboard. We will start by discussing the term in more detail.
What is a Real-Time Dashboard?
A real-time dashboard is a visualisation tool that displays various parameters and information, such as key performance indicators (KPIs), metrics, project statuses and updates, safety alerts, etc.
What is particularly valuable about this cutting-edge technology is its capacity to automatically update and show the latest data available. This distinguishes a live data dashboard from a digital poster, which is another efficient and environmentally friendly means of visualisation.
With the instant access provided to critical insights, a real-time dashboard enables users to track, analyse, and report on the organisation’s performance, production, and updates in real-time. Thus, a live-data dashboard provides all the data required to run a company effectively, ensure safety, and establish a highly productive and motivating environment.
What are the benefits of real-time dashboards?
Organisations that implement a BI-powered real-time dashboard are better rigged to achieve their productivity and performance goals. This tendency stems from the advantages that come with utilising visualising technology. Some of these advantages are:
- Time efficiency: Live data dashboards can filter the information and show only relevant, department-specific data.
- Smarter, data-driven decisions: The real-time, relevant, and clearly visualised information conveniently available just at your fingertips empower you and your team to make well-informed decisions.
- Improved collaboration and communication: A real-time dashboard removes departmental silos and provides clear and unified information to all team members across your organisation. These advantages can be further maximised by applying the best practices of internal screen-enabled communications
- Enhanced productivity: Keeping everyone in your team informed and equipped with all current business-critical data boosts their motivation and productivity.
- Cost-effectiveness: Implementing a real-time dashboard will result in improved resource management. It will also reduce the need for employing staff responsible for data collecting and processing, which will generate considerable cost savings.
- Stronger company culture: Adopting a real-time dashboard and digital signage software will allow showing unified relevant content on all screens and in all departments in your company. This will make it easier for your management to convey your messages, share company updates, and celebrate achievements.
- A culture of inclusion and transparency: The feeling of having access to all important information just like every other employee and department will create engagement, an atmosphere of equity, and a sense of belonging.
Real-Time Dashboard Examples
The following live data dashboards can optimise your performance and give your business a competitive edge.
Operational Dashboard
An operational dashboard provides the best indication of individual employees’ performance and the collective performance of the company. The particular metrics and the KPI displayed depend on the organisation, its industry, and its niche.
Analytics Dashboard
An analytics dashboard combines real-time with historical data to enable business analysts to find, understand, and interpret complex relationships and trends. Not only do such dashboards allow for evaluation of the current state of a business, project, or task, but provide insights into whether businesses achieve their objectives
Financial Performance Dashboard
A financial performance dashboard allows you to monitor all essential finance KPIs, which is vital for tracking expenses, profits, and sales. These insights are required for monitoring and assessing the financial status of the organisation. It also ensures effective cash management and achieving the financial objectives of an organisation or a department.
The dashboard is designed to display current data on the assets and liabilities of a business. Among the assets that it tracks are inventory and all the available cash, both in the bank or in hand. Investments and accounts receivables can also be indicated on a financial performance dashboard. Current liabilities and accounts payable are some of the liabilities a financial performance dashboard shows.
Management Dashboard
A management dashboard is a visualisation tool displaying real-time and historical data on essential management KPIs. The reporting functionality can summarise the data and generate relevant reports enhancing the visibility and clarity for C-level executives. The ultimate purpose of these dashboards is to concentrate all important insights and the latest information in a single place and allow for making fast and data-driven managerial decisions.
The data input for management dashboards includes:
- Sales Targets
- Average Customer Lifetime Value
- Customer Acquisition Costs
- Revenue for the current period (month, quarter, or year) vs Revenue for the previous period
- Customer Base for the current period vs Customer Base for the previous period, etc.
The availability of all this data enhances transparency and accountability across the individual departments and the whole company and provides the company’s management with a clear view of the overall business performance.
KPI dashboard
A KPI dashboard offers a clear and easy-to-read visualisation of key performance indicators through interactive charts and graphs. This dashboard allows for obtaining actionable insights based on complex real-time and historical KPI data. It enables users to conduct fast reviews and analyses of performance, drilling down into massive data sets. With the information visualisation and processing capacities of KPI dashboards, companies can make effective decisions, synchronise multiple processes, and optimise performance.
Real-Time Dashboard Use Cases
Live data dashboards have multiple applications across a whole range of industries. Here are some of their most common use cases.
Manufacturing Dashboard
Real-time TV dashboards enable manufacturing companies to display live data anywhere throughout their facilities. The network of manufacturing screens is managed using digital signage software. Installed within offices, factory floors, recreational rooms, and lobbies, dashboards improve communications in the organisation.
They ensure the successful delivery of all messages that may contain production data, business-critical metrics and achievements, safety precautions and alerts, or any other important information. As a result, manufacturers can see a boost in employee awareness, understanding, and motivation.
Fast-Moving Consumer Goods
Real-time dashboards are particularly efficient in assessing and streamlining the management of fast-moving consumer goods. Companies can optimise supply chain operations by synchronising several processes.
The dashboard displays a general overview showing live data on critical processes and departments. The information available on all screens includes:
- Inventory turnover in days and hours
- On-time and delayed deliveries
- Out-of-stock rate
- Number of products sold
- Average selling time, etc.
Users can use this information to come up with actionable recommendations and adjustments.
Health and Safety
Live data dashboards can display safety and hygiene-related information, protocols, and notices. These could include company- and department-specific precautions, warnings, and training content.
Furthermore, live data dashboards can show automatically triggered safety alerts and messages wherever required at the right time. So, an emergency will trigger playing specific content. The occurrence of fire, for instance, will activate a company-specific message directing the employees and any potential visitors on the premises to the nearest exit.
Challenges of Using Real-Time Dashboards
Beneficial as it may be, using a live data dashboard involves some challenges. Fortunately, the most effective digital signage software provides the strategies and means of combating them. Here are some challenges users can face:
Inaccurate Data Uploads
The company-wide availability of the information displayed by a dashboard imposes extremely strict requirements for the accuracy, consistency, and timeliness of the data. Full-fledged digital signage solutions should come with an effective and user-friendly CMS software that allows uploading, creating, scheduling, and managing their screen content. Having the right technology in place and assigning some of your employees to the task of information collection and updating will help ensure data accuracy at all times.
Overwhelming Amounts of Information
With all the real-time and historical data collected and constantly updated, users can feel overwhelmed, overloaded, and lost in the ocean of information. The TrouDigital digital signage software allows for filtering and scheduling of the information so that only relevant and timely content is displayed. Training your employees accordingly will enable you and your organisation to benefit fully from these capacities of the CMS software and avoid data overload.
Data Security
Business-critical data is constantly collected and displayed. The reliability and security of its storage directly impact the business decisions made by the management. To ensure the required data security, modern solutions, such as TrouDigital, make use of the advantages of cloud technology. All your data is securely stored and organised in the cloud and never on local devices, which are susceptible to damage, theft, and human errors. The secure cloud-based CMS allows data to be monitored and managed from any location.
Time to Get Your Message Across with a Live Data Dashboard
Implementing a real-time dashboard managed with digital signage software is an effective way to have all your messages delivered to the right employees at the right time. It also helps keep your team informed, connected, and motivated. These benefits translate into improved communication, increased productivity, and enhanced safety.
A real-time dashboard offers appealing and informative visualisation of alphabetical, numerical, pictorial, and graphical data. It is particularly impactful when the information is filtered to ensure relevance and avoid clutter.
Want to fuel your internal communications and awareness with a live data dashboard? Speak to our expert team today!
