5 Best Practices when building BI Dashboards

Business Intelligence or short BI dashboards and reports are an important tool for organizations to gain insights and make data-driven decisions. But developing and creating an effective and easy understandable dashboard requires careful planning, thoughtful design and attention to detail. In this article, I would like to share my top best practices when creating a BI dashboard.

Best Practice 1: Identify the Purpose and the Target Group of the Dashboard

The first step in designing a BI dashboard is to determine the purpose of the dashboard. What information do you want to convey, and who is the target group? The answers to these questions will help you determine which data sources and metrics to include in the dashboard. Also, you can then design the content according to the target group, depending on whether they are more detail-oriented or only want to see the most important KPIs.

Best Practice 2: Choose the right Visualization

Choosing the right visualization is very critical to the success of a BI dashboard. The visualization should be easy to read, aesthetically pleasing, and convey the right message. Use charts, graphs, and tables that best reflect the data you want to show. Avoid cluttered visualizations and choose color schemes that are pleasing to the eye.

Best Practice 3: Keep it simple

The most effective BI dashboards are simple and easy to use. Avoid cramming too much information onto a single screen, as this can overwhelm users and make it difficult to gain insights. Instead, focus on displaying the most important information, and let users look up details as needed. Also, graphics should not be too tiring to read, sometimes just a KPI as text or a diagram that summarizes information well is enough.

The example above shows that a simple test that represents the average is much faster to understand and easier to use than a table with all the contents. In case of doubt, you can use both. The text on the first page and the details further below, on the next page or as an export e.g. in Excel or Google Sheets - for those who want more detail.

Best Practice 4: Provide Context and make it interactive

Context is critical to understanding the data displayed in a BI dashboard. Provide context through titles, labels, and annotations that explain the data being displayed. For example, use labels to indicate the time period analyzed or explain the methodology used to calculate a metric. Also interactive BI dashboards allow users to explore the data and gain insights not immediately apparent from static displays. Use filters, drill-down capabilities, and other interactive features to allow users to dive deeper into the data and answer their own questions.

Best Practice 5: Ensure Data Accuracy and Consistency

While the above tips are more to be considered during creation, you should have the last best practice in mind in advance: data accuracy and consistency. These two are critical to building trust in a BI dashboard and the data itself of course. Ensure that data comes from reliable sources and that it is consistent throughout the dashboard. Use data validation tools to identify errors or inconsistencies before they enter the dashboard. A good way to automate this and to design it in a stable way, especially for large amounts of data, are certainly data platforms like Data Lakehouses and Data Warehouses in the process before.

Summary

Building coherent and easy understandable dashboards and reports are essential for conveying results from collected data in the best way possible. Only with comprehensive dashboards and reports, companies have the ability to make the rightful decisions based on their collected data.