Most modern financial management software, regardless the industry or market segment utilize user dashboards to visually present data that is thought to be important to all system users.
We at Katipult strive to develop our product so that it can be fully adapted to the specific requirements of your organization and your employees, realizing that features such as user dashboards become the most useful when you are able to display the data most relevant to each of your platform's user-types.
Dashboards contain one or more widgets that give you an overview of the data and metrics you care about most. The information outlined in this article will show you what a user dashboard should help you accomplish and help you decide on the necessary features when it comes to selecting a user-dashboard for your investment platform.
Here are the 5 Key Features For Your User Dashboards:
1. Automated Data:
This is an era of unprecedented automation, in pursuit of higher efficiency organizations are looking to automate even the smallest of processes. However there are still businesses that create dashboards that rely on manual data updates. While it may seem feasible at the time, this mistake can cripple the future usefulness of the dashboard.
Why is this bad? Besides the obvious time drain, it leads to out-of-date, inaccurate dashboards. While it may work for a little while, the employee in charge of updating the dashboard will eventually forget to make an update. Or, maybe they’ll make a mistake as they’re updating the dashboard.
The results can be disastrous. The business goes on using the dashboard, without knowing the data is out of date or inaccurate–resulting in misinformed decisions.
If you plan on using your dashboard as a decision-making tool, you must automate your data feeds. Don’t make your dashboard’s accuracy rely on manual processes.
2. Complete Picture:
Another frequent problem with dashboards is that they only tell part of the story. The dashboard may integrate with a portion of your data, but some amount of data may still be floating around in spreadsheets–which doesn’t get included in the dashboard. If you want an effective dashboard, it must be able to give you a complete view of your data.
3. Actionable Metrics:
Thanks to increasingly operating on centralized, online platforms, organizations have become really good at collecting staggering amounts of data. What we sometimes fail to realize is that not all data is useful all the time. Cluttering up the dashboards with arbitrarily chosen metrics won’t result in the enhanced decision making you’re meant to get from presented data.
The key to an effective dashboard is being able to select and display actionable metrics, those that help you make decisions.Companies need to make a conscious effort to revise the metrics for various user dashboards, adopting the notion that only metrics that led to clear action items should be included on a given dashboard. This will ensure that the data being displayed is allowing the user to get an accurate and insightful snapshot of current performance.
4. Simple Navigation:
In general, dashboard organization problems usually stem from dashboards that try to do too much. They try to include too many features, or too much data. They try to fit as much information as possible on the screen.
This negates the true power of dashboards - simplicity. As a rule of thumb, a dashboard should be able to fit on one page. This encourages rigorous thought to be applied in selecting the key dashboard metrics and prevents companies from cramming in too much information, making data presentation easier and the dashboard more understandable.
5. Customization:
With dashboards, one size doesn’t fit all. Different users want to see different data. Or, they may want to see the same data, but organized differently. The problem is, many dashboards still display a predetermined set of metrics in a pre-set layout. If different users want different information, new versions of the same dashboard need to be developed and constantly updated. This is a lengthy process that wastes company resources and frustrates the users.
A modern dashboard must include customization options. The user should have the option to pick and choose which data to display, and how to display it.
