Introduction
Dashboard is a buzzword heard over the past decade, and it is making its way to mobile phones and tablets. Whether tracking fitness, product sales, or other metrics, dashboards help keep an eye on what's happening in each context.
Why Dashboards Exist
Dashboards make it easy to consume data and comprehend its meaning quickly and easily. They serve multiple purposes:
- Monitor performance in real-time
- Set business strategy for the next quarter
- Track marketing campaign performance over time
Why Dashboards Are Crucial
1. Dashboards Save Analysis Time Drastically
The need to analyze data as soon as it arrives is increasing. Devices such as IoTs and sensors generate data at phenomenal rates. Browsing through huge piles of logs or spreadsheets cannot effectively analyze massive data volumes.
Example: Website logs grow quickly as traffic increases. Identifying most-visited pages by browsing web logs is much more difficult than visualizing it on a dashboard.
2. At-a-Glance Real-Time Monitoring
Dashboards reveal information in a timely manner, allowing businesses to take advantage of opportunities or avoid losses.
Business Opportunities: Example: A customer visiting a retail store just after viewing product reviews on your website. Tracking customer activity across multiple channels enables offering timely coupons to increase loyalty.
Alarming Issues: Example: Network performance monitoring showing certain network parts are down requires immediate attention.
3. Historical Analysis & Data Mining
Comparing current situations with historic points in time is important for business decisions. Dashboards should provide historic views alongside current KPI status.
Example: Comparing current month product sales with the same month last year helps understand benefits of newly added resources.
4. Discovering Unknown Insights: Answering Questions Never Asked For
In the big data era, applications deal with data scattered across different silos. Correlating them to find patterns and trends is essential. Dashboards backed by big data technologies identify these patterns at a glance.
Example: A healthcare application might correlate food nutrient databases with individual patient food intake, illness history, and exercise routines. A dashboard merging this diverse data on a single screen enables pattern discovery.
Advanced visualization technologies handle high-dimensional data effectively, providing both exploratory and explanatory dashboards for comprehending and consuming big data.
Conclusion
Dashboards are essential tools in the big data era, enabling organizations to quickly make sense of complex data, monitor performance, discover trends, and make informed decisions rapidly. By investing in effective dashboard solutions, organizations can unlock the full potential of their big data assets.