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Why Dashboards Are Important for Your Business and Not Just Your Car!

A digital dashboard, such as the kind used by WorkingMouse, are an innovation that allows for a number of key functions to occur. It allows key personnel to monitor contribution by various teams or departments within the organisation. A way in which to capture the overall performance of the organisation can be done via a dashboard. Specific and broad data can be reported and displayed in visual performance measures thus giving a snapshot of not just each team or department but the organisation as a whole. This is important as it allows organisations to make sure they align with strategies and organisation wide goals.

From a technical perspective, dashboards can be categorised by function. The main functions are strategic and analytical. Strategic dashboard's purpose is to support management at every level of an organisation. They allow for the quick overview of data as well as providing an avenue for monitoring the opportunities and health of a business. Analytical dashboards are generally used for as a support system for management by assisting users with drilling down data. There is typically more history and context entered into a analytical dashboard. This is especially useful when comparing performance from different time periods.

Among the other benefits that dashboards have, is their ability to identify and correct negative trends that may be occurring. This function is important for small and big organisations alike as the faster an issue or negative trend is noticed the less time it has to impact on the business. In addition to this dashboards can give a business the ability to make key decisions based on collected business intelligence rather than a single report. There is an opportunity to get the bigger picture.

Recently Working Mouse partnered with Carelynx to create a dashboard that allowed them to see resident's health metrics. This provided Carelynx with an indicator of the performance of an aged care facility, which relates directly to their government funding. By using the dashboard Carelynx can access insights that would normally cost many hours of manually pulling data and calculating figures with a few clicks.

When considering how to report data, share measurements and display trends in one tool the first solution that should spring to mind is dashboards. They provide easy access to a snapshot as well as long-term findings of KPIs or Key Performance Indicators that directly relate to a business process or objective of the business. A more practical way to think about dashboards is that they are progress reports made visual.