Dive into the common pitfalls of dashboard creation and best practices for crafting effective, insightful reports. Doug and Jess explore the frequent mistakes made in sales reporting, emphasizing the importance of clarity. They discuss the need for dashboards to serve a specific job to be done, the dangers of information overload, and the importance of collaboration between data teams and leadership.
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Show Notes:
Pre-Show Banter:
- Doug is feeling discombobulated because his setup for recording feels different–Jess is on the other side of his screen and they’re recording on a Thursday.
- It’s cold and raining in Maryland where Doug is—quite the opposite for Jess.
Main Discussion Points:
- More isn’t better: Overloading dashboards with excessive data leads to confusion and diminishes their effectiveness.
- One job, one dashboard: Dashboards should have a clear purpose and serve a single role, rather than trying to address multiple needs at once.
- Subtraction is key: Regularly review and remove unnecessary reports or metrics from dashboards to maintain clarity and focus.
- Dashboards prompt questions, not just answers: Effective dashboards encourage deeper investigation and analysis.
- Data cleanliness: Data should be “clean enough” to provide meaningful insights, focusing on trends and direction rather than striving for perfection.
- Collaboration is essential: A successful dashboard implementation requires collaboration between data teams, analysts, and leadership to ensure alignment and address process issues.
Jess’s Takeaways:
- More is not better.
- Dashboards should fill one role and one job. You need to be thinking about who is looking at the dashboard and what you’re hiring it for. Think about the frequency that it should be looked at.
- Dashboards should prompt more questions than answers.
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