1. Dashboards: The big picture of big
information
In 2007, news footage appeared on YouTube of rats scurrying through a Taco Bell-
KFCrestaurant in New York and the stock value of parent company Yum Brands dropped
1% on that news alone. Sales for the quarter fell by 11%. In the space of a day, a
multinational corporation was damaged because of one blundering franchise owner. That
was how fast business moved four years ago. Things are even faster today.
If you don’t wrap your head around this dizzying pace, you’re likely to get left in the dust.
The good news is that the tools are out there to apprehend your situation in the most
frenetic of environments. Live data reporting software like ActiveReports Server brings you
up-to-the-minute information as fast as it can be generated. But if you’re simply trying to
stay on top of an ever-growing pile of data, you need a way to keep it manageable, a way to
comprehend it at a glance.
Enter the data dashboard
A dashboard is a one-stop shop for important, high-level information without the details. It
puts all the data you need to make informed decisions onto a single screen. It can be a
general organizational overview, for instance, giving you a snapshot of your whole
business.
Read the full article