How are you using screens in your workplace? Discover the top KPI dashboards, and which one fits your business

Measures, metrics, KPIs – It’s all about data, data and more data. We have never had more data in our hands. Understanding and making productive use of it is essential to your business.

How many people have opened your email? How many sales did your team bring in? And most importantly, how much time do you spend creating spreadsheets and getting buried in reports? Wouldn’t it be easier if there was a way to display your data so that you know exactly what’s going on in your business at all times?

What is a dashboard?

The go-to solution you are looking for is dashboards. A tool that cuts through data clutter and helps you get down to what really matters. But more concretely, what is a dashboard?

Founder of Perceptual Edge, Stephen Few describes dashboards as a visual display of your business’ data that is essential to achieve your goals. This data is consolidated and showcased on a single screen so that it can be tracked and monitored at a glance. Truly helpful is the fact that the data is automatically updating itself without any assistance from the user. With the right dashboard, you can experience the satisfaction of leading your business to success.

I know what you’re thinking: so, how do I spot the right dashboard?

As the Partnerships Manager at Airtame, I’ve spent months researching dashboards that work with Airtame.

Provided that these executive dashboard templates have a shareable public link, you can copy-paste it into your Airtame’s settings, and your dashboard will display on the screen. Once your dashboard is up on a large screen, it becomes a wallboard, a term you might have heard before but never really knew what it was. The main benefit of wallboards is that they are highly visible and easy to understand for everyone around them.

Here I found not one but 26 executive dashboard template, that will easily help you showcase your company’s indispensable data on any office screen. To make your life easier, I’ve split them into Executive Dashboards and Social Walls, according to their focus.

Executive Dashboard Templates

If what you’re looking for is the classic KPI dashboard that helps you keep track of your business performance, then Executive Dashboards are for you. This includes your accounting software data, your CRM, website analytics, or email system data for a broader perspective. Here are some recommendations:

Klipfolio

Used by more than 4,500 companies, and integrating data from Dropbox, Marketo, Moz, and so forth, our partner, Klipfolio makes sure that your web analytics, sales and finances, and project management goals are transparent throughout your company. I personally have a screen dedicated to Klipfolio dashboards in front of my desk and it really makes my life easier.

Cyfe

An all-in-one business dashboard app, Cyfe’s goal is to help you make better business decisions by bringing all of your business performance data under one roof. However, to benefit from its full potential, you would have to sign up for a Premium account.

Curious to hear more? Check their tutorial.

Plecto

With varied integrations, such as Zendesk, Pipedrive, Podio, leaderboards and custom recognition features, Plecto will drive your team’s motivation sky high. If sales are your main focus, Plecto is what you’re looking for. Also, I must say the pricing plan is quite eye-catching.

Want to check all of their features? Click here.

Datapine

Small, medium, large companies – it doesn’t matter. Datapine can provide you with accurate KPIs in the most professional way, be it management, finance, sales or marketing related. Plus, I really enjoyed their customer support. For example, booking a demo and understanding their product took no time at all.

Click here for a tutorial teaser of how it works.

Axosoft

Monitor your workflow, connect to an ever-growing list of tools and services, and make sure that all relevant stakeholders in your projects get the essential details with Axosoft. I would also add that these dashboards load very fast, so you won’t have to worry about delays in your content.

Click here for a sneak peak.

Tableau Public

By connecting and visualizing your data in a matter of minutes, Tableau Public is one of those executive dashboard templates that can make you forget about the old-school spreadsheets and reports that used to clutter your life.

I like the fact that Tableau has a broad service offering. Also, they are pretty active in terms of social events. So if you have any doubts, you can always check if they’re holding an event in your neighborhood.

Want more insights on how to use it? Click here for some guidelines.

Cervinoboard

Integrating Facebook, MailChimp, Google Analytics and Adwords and many more, Cervinoboard focuses on online marketing agencies. They deliver smart services that save a lot of time for agencies that wish to deploy and maintain large amounts of dashboards. A few newer services are still in beta, but this is a young startup to watch.

Dundas

A business solution that is able to monitor data from a wide range of industries. From banking and finance, education, government to pharmaceutical transport and logistics, retail, and so on. With more than 20 years of experience on the market, Dundas has dedicated over 7 of them to their dashboard project development.

However, if you want to explore their service offering, you should definitely consider signing up for a Premium account. If this sounds like a deal, get started with a free trial!

Zoho

Boosting your sales, managing daily activities or stepping up your productivity game – Zoho has helped business professionals take care of all these for more than a decade. If I were looking for a very complex software provider, I would most likely choose Zoho.

Want to get a better sense of your data? Watch this video!

DashThis

Be it SEO, SEM, PPC or social media, DashThis has got your back. It automatically gathers all your client data into one dashboard report.

If you are a digital agency, DashThis dashboards might be just what you’re looking for. But feel free to check their demo video here and read more about their features.

Leftronic

Lets you easily combine the data your team needs and has customizable dashboards. What else is there? Oh, yes, the fact that it can be tailored to nearly every market from digital agencies to server admins and sales teams. Quite a tool for startups, I’d say.

Start with a free trial to get better sense of these dashboards.

Plotly

Incredibly user-friendly features and very intuitive executive dashboard templates. Not to mention the sharp design of their live graphs. Sometimes, it can take a while to load, but it’s worth the wait. The pricing plan: really appealing.

Learn more on how to use Plotly by clicking here.

PowerBI

This is a very useful Business Intelligence tool for Microsoft users. It’s connected with Excel and Microsoft Office 365 and has a publish to web function that can be used with Airtame.

SimpleKPI

The name says it all, because SimpleKPI is just that – simple. And when it comes to monitoring your business reports, that’s what you want from executive dashboard templates. The visuals are nicely put together and easy to understand.

Databox

Databox has a clever drag-and-drop editor that makes data visualization a breeze. It has a ton of integration options so you can connect all data sources, no matter where you want your information to come from.

Dasheroo

A great thing with Dasheroo is that you can have several different executive dashboard templates to suit different needs or even different people. Organize data and set up dashboards for you SoMe presence, your sales team, your support… Everything your heart desires. Oh, and it’s free!

Grow

Many services can’t offer a swift implementation but take months to get your solution up and running. Grow claims they implement 8x faster than competitors, meaning you don’t have to wait to get started with analyzing data. You can create role-specific KPI dashboards for an unlimited amount of team members, which is also a nice feature.

Geckoboard

Sometimes, one dashboard just isn’t enough. That’s why Geckoboards lets you display several different dashboards on the same screen. You can even add your own logo for a customized look and feel that matches your brand.

Target Dashboard

You can automatically merge data with this service. That makes it easy for you to get an overview of all metrics, goals and KPIs without having to worry about the time spent trying to do it yourself. Target Dashboard includes support in their pricing plan, and that’s something we applaud. Bills can pile up when problems arise if support isn’t included, so that’s definitely something to look for when choosing a dashboard service.

Octoboard

With Octoboard, you can create public dashboards for easy sharing with other teams or clients. Octoboard also offers activity monitoring for brands and bloggers on social platforms. For those out there that want to glance at competitors while simultaneously looking at their own engagement, this is superb. That’s why I’ve put it as the last in the executive dashboard section, because it would fit just as well in the next section; social walls.

Social Walls

Presumably, you want to track your social media lifespan, or organize a kick-ass event. Social walls can help you stay on the pulse of your social media community. These are some suggestions that caught my eye.

Strea.ma

Want to keep track of your social media activity for a certain event or conference? With so many platforms out there, why not bring all of them into one easy-to-use display so that everyone can see your tailored stream of content unfolding in real time? Start with a free trial and then you can decide among Plus, Premium or customized plans.

Juicer

Meet Juicer, a social media aggregator that sets your filters up, moderates your posts, and analyzes your social media engagement. What’s more, Juicer has 18 integrations and a modest pricing plan.

Worth giving a try!

Walls.io

Unleashing your hashtags and building your social wall with data integrated from over 15 platforms is a no-brainer if you go with Walls.io. Keep your audience updated with Walls.io’s customizable next-generation social wall and your next event is sure to be a success.

Basic no-frills executive dashboard templates

Suppose you are only looking to create and share your slide decks. Or maybe you want to focus on showcasing your data through charts. Here are some no-frills options that work great:

Slides

Slides allows you to create and share great complex presentations online, in your very own browser without the need to download anything. See for yourself by clicking here.

Project Manager

On the hunt for real-time executive dashboard templates for your business? With Project Manager, you can combine powerful project planning and scheduling features with collaboration tools for teams, plan waterfall projects, and adjust due dates. Project Manager takes project planning to a whole new level, I must say.

Datawrapper

Into maps & charts? Then Datawrapper is one of the optimum executive dashboard templates for you. Back up your presentation with this great visualization tool and you might just get some applause by the end of it.

What’s your favorite dashboard? Who should I look into next on my hunt for great dashboards you can use with Airtame? Let us know in the comments!

Best data visualization tools drive better decision making. As Peter Drucker says, “what’s measured improves.” And the data backs up business leaders believe it.

• 91% of marketing leaders believe successful brands use customer data to drive business decisions.
• 87% of marketers agree capturing and sharing the right data is important to effectively measuring ROI in their own company

A simple pie chart you can one-click using Microsoft Excel is a best data visualization tool if it accomplishes this task. As technology has evolved, new kinds of data visualizations have emerged. Not only pie, line and bar charts but timelines, maps, heat maps and gauges using a whole host of new technologies and tools.

If you’re looking to really exploit best data visualization tools, you should be careful before making a buying decision. The costs of these tools vary widely. You could spend a lot of money before you know if you’re getting what you really need.

To use data to improve decision making without spending any money, here are the 10 best data visualization tools for free in 2018

1. TABLEAU PUBLIC: This is the same platform as the paid version of Tableau Desktop with only one caveat: Everything you create with it is public, which means you’ll automatically be making it available on the web via Tableau’s visualization gallery. The company chose not to make its free version feature-poor. And Tableau Gallery is a great resource, not only for business people but also for researchers, students, and journalists looking for ways not just to flesh out and beautify their Other folks have done tremendous work on some truly impressive data visualizations and Tableau has curated that content and made it available for download.

2. CHARTBLOCKS: Chartblocks, like many of these free programs, basically does the same thing that made Windows so successful: replace the code with a visual interface so anyone can use it. In Chartblocks’ case, that visual interface is their chart designer, which guides you through the process. With its free version, you can make up to 30 charts, export the charts as PNG files (no vector graphics in this version), and get up to 5,000 monthly views.

3. CHARTBUILDER: This best visualization tool has one of the cleanest user interfaces among all the charting tools I’ve seen. It’s extremely easy to use as well. All you have to do is upload a CSV file, or a Google Sheets link, and it’ll generate the chart for you. Moreover, it refreshes your chart every 30 minutes, so your chart’s data source remains fairly up-to-date. The Charted service is free, and its source code is also freely available if you would like to run it on your own web server.

4. DATAWRAPPER: This is one of the extremely easy-to-use best data visualization tools for plotting interactive charts. All you need to do is upload your data via a CSV file, choose the chart you want to plot, and that’s basically it, you’re good to go! It’s a very popular tool among journalists, often using Datawrapper to embed live charts into their news articles. The fact that it’s a tool of choice for most of the non-techie people out there tells you how easy Datawrapper is to use. Read this tutorial to get started with Datawrapper.

5. HIGHCHARTS: Highcharts, another big name in the data visualization domain, offers you a wide selection of charts and maps. They offer many plugins that allow you to experience all of its powerful features without needing to deal with JavaScript. Highcharts is free for non-commercial purposes.

6. GOOGLE CHARTS: Google Charts is user-friendly and compatible with all browsers and platforms. It covers a wide range of data visualization types — from simple line and bar graphs to complex hierarchical tree maps — making Google charts suitable for almost any project. Check out the gallery that showcases the various charts and visualizations that Google Charts offers.

7. MYHEATMAPS: If you want your visualization to provide immediate recognition, a heat map is a good way to go. Heat maps’ use of color makes them intuitive. MyHeatMap has the same easy user experience as a lot of other free software: drag, drop, (et voilà!) map. Be sure that at least two of the rows are for latitude and longitude, and that these values are included for all the data points you want to map. The one downside is a lack of privacy. MyHeatMap’s free version only offers public maps, and those free maps only get 20 data points for each.

8. OPENHEATMAPS: Creating a map is simple. You upload a CSV, Excel, or Google Sheets file to owner Pete Warden’s heat map website, click a button and get a map. It’ll live on his site, but you can link to it. This is all to say that Openheatmap is about as simple as sending an email with an attachment.

9. TIMELINE: Timelines are to history what directions are on maps: they show how one thing led to another. Timelines can also be a great way to enliven reports, especially when a tool like Timeline allows you to design and embed them for free. If you’ve got a Google Drive account, just make a Google Spreadsheet using a template Timeline provides, embed it on your website.

10. RAW: Raw bridges the gap between spreadsheets and vector graphics. It’s built on the D3.js platform. If you’re not a programmer, Raw could be the perfect data visualization tool for you. Raw provides a selection of 16 ready-to-use chart types. Customization is one of the biggest positive aspects of Raw, for it allows you to use your own custom layouts.

Do these best data visualization tools give you an idea of one for your business? Are you glad these best data visualization tools are free? Does your business need help with data visualization?

Good ROI measures the profitability of investments and helps objectively assess future success.

ROI also demonstrates how skilled the people in charge are at generating profitable growth and managing company funds wisely.

What is a good ROI? 10 experts state explain their standards for a range of industries.

1. Adverstising
2. Business Owner
3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
4. Customer Service
5. Entrepreneur
6. Investing
7. Marketing
8. Digital Marketing
9. Real Estate
10. Restaurant
11. Venture Capital

Here’s what they have to say.

GOOD ROI FOR ADVERTISING (GOOGLE ADWORDS)

“Research show businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on AdWords. According to Google, campaigns that use the Conversion Optimizer achieve a 21% increase in conversions while decreasing CPA by 14% on average.” – Elisa Gabbert, Sr. Manager of Content and SEO, WordStream

GOOD ROI FOR A BUSINESS OWNER

“Strive to make at least triple the value of the hard cash you have invested in your business. Average angel investors and venture capital fund investors shoot for a return of 4 to 10 times their invested capital.” – Start on Purpose

GOOD ROI FOR CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM)

Nucleus Research finds that for every dollar spent on CRM implementation, returns can peak at a stellar $8.71 (2014). That’s a $3.11 jump from three years ago when the strongest returns topped out at $5.60.” – Sarah Brigham, Nutshell

GOOD ROI FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE

“In research on actual customer transactions published in the Harvard Business Review, researchers found that among thousands of customers studied, customers who had the best past experiences spend 140% more compared to those who had the poorest past experience.” – Elen Veenpere, Groove

GOOD ROI FOR AN ENTREPRENEUR

“My advice to entrepreneurs is to try to at least double total invested capital plus the value of any contingent liabilities associated with guaranteeing bank debt, real estate leases and equipment leases. Building a successful business is hard work. Earning a salary is not enough to compensate for all the risks and effort involved with business ownership.” – Susan Schreter, Fox Business

GOOD ROI FOR INVESTING

“A really good return on investment for an active investor is 15% annually. It’s aggressive, but it’s achievable if you put in time to look for bargains. ROI, or Return on Investment, measures the efficiency of an investment. For every dollar you put in, what kind of profit can you expect.You can double your buying power every six years if you make an average return on investment of 12% after taxes and inflation every year.” – Trendshare

GOOD ROI FOR MARKETING

“A good ROI for marketing is 5:1. A 5:1 ratio is middle of the bell curve. A ratio over 5:1 is considered strong for most businesses, and a 10:1 ratio is exceptional. A 2:1 revenue to marketing cost ratio wouldn’t be profitable for many businesses, as the cost to produce or acquire the item being sold (also known as cost-of-goods-sold, or COGS) is about 50% of the sale price. For these businesses, if you spend $100 in marketing to generate $200 in sales, and it costs $100 to make the product being sold, you are breaking even. If all you accomplish with your marketing is break even, you might as well not do it.” – Chris Leone

GOOD ROI FOR DIGITAL MARKETING

“According to Neilsen, the average marketing return on investment is $1.09. A $1.09 ROI means that for every $1 spent, the company generates $2.09 (for a profit of $1.09). The top 3 marketing media with the highest average return on investment are email marketing, search engine optimization, and direct mail. Tracking source of sales to be able to calculate return on investment from your marketing initiatives is critical to being able to improve the effectiveness of your marketing spending.” – Profitworks

GOOD ROI FOR REAL ESTATE

“Without using any debt, real estate return demands from investors mirror those of business ownership and stocks. The real rate of return for good, non-leveraged properties has been roughly 7% after inflation. Since we have gone through decades of 3% inflation, over the past 20 years, that figure seems to have stabilized at 10%.” – Joshua Kennon, Managing Director, Kennon-Green & Co. 

GOOD ROI FOR A RESTAURANT

“If by ROI you mean the profit realized annually by the average restaurant, it is very consistent across the industry: 3–5% according to several sources. Extremely well run restaurants or very high-end places might make as much as 10%, but those are the exceptions — not the norm. I would be very suspect of any restaurant that claims to achieve 15–25% net profits.” – Chuck Rogers, New Orleans Restaurant Owner

GOOD ROI FOR VENTURE CAPITAL

“Venture capital (“VC”) funds, as well as experienced angel investors, specialize in investing in startup and growth-oriented privately held companies. They understand the statistical risks of business failure within their investment portfolio. They know that on average, only four out of 10 investments in promising entrepreneurial companies will deliver any profit to VC fund investors. This is why VCs and angels aim extra high and turn down investment opportunities that don’t represent a “grand slam home run potential” to the overall fund.” Susan Schreter, Fox Business

Do these example help you understand what is a good ROI and why? How is your business measuring up? Or, if you don’t know, do you think it’s worth knowing what is the ROI for your business?

A metric is a standard of measurement. A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. Organizations use KPIs to evaluate their success at reaching targets.

What’s the difference? A KPI is a “metric that matters.” It relates directly to the business’s objective or goal to help keep the strategy on track. Because a KPI is a metric that matters, a KPI is a metric that is tied to a target.

The video above explains the difference and offers examples.

Anivash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google, says a key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric that helps you understand how you are doing against your objectives. Here’s how other experts define the difference between a metric and a KPI.

How do you chose KPIs. Look for the key metrics that:

1. Relate to your business objective
2. Provide context by being tracked over time
3. Are based on legitimate data
4. Are easy to understand
5. Create meaning
6. Can be acted upon
7. Do it with the key stakeholders who are accountable

The video was created by Rutgers Business School Executive Education. I have had the privilege of serving on their MBA Faculty for 8 years. The Rutgers Business School is ranked #3 in the nation in MBA employment.

Rutgers Business School Executive Education offers Mini-MBA’s in Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing. They occur offline in a week-long curriculum in an open classroom. Or online over 10 weeks at a pace that accounts for an executive’s busy work schedule. Digital Marketing is ranked among the Top 30 Best Value certificate programs.

Both consist of the same 10 modules that include: Digital and social strategy development, search engine optimization, paid search, content marketing, mobile marketing, video marketing, customer experience and measurement and ROI.

Either is going to up your game in fastest growing marketing channels, help advance your career or assist you in your own reinvention.

Does this video explain the difference between a metric and a KPI to you? Is your organization ready to put to use the KPIs that keep your business strategy on track?

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. – Peter Drucker

Social Analytics benefits any company by helping them better measure and manage their business. Social Analytics benefits come in the form of competitive intelligence, targeting, customer support, predicting behaviors and course correction. They help build any business.

Social analytics is the collection and analysis of statistical, digital data on how users interface with an organization, particularly online. It is an analysis of the tweets, blogs and other postings on the social web, with a focus on a particular subject area.

This does not negate the importance of traditional research, where focus groups give you a private view on possibly sensitive topics or a questionnaire is filled out by 500 people in a designated age group or profession. Social analytics provide access to data and conversations about a topic or subject occurring right now and the opportunity to listen, learn, filter, measure and put them to use for business benefits.

Why is this relevant? Here are 5 social analytics benefits that help any business.

COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE: Is collecting and analyzing actionable information about competitors and the marketplace to form a business strategy. Its aim is to learn everything there is to know about the competitive environment to make the best possible decisions. Here’s what can be accessed through social media.

• 91% of retail brands use 2 or more social media channels
• 81% of all small and medium businesses use some kind of social platform.
• 73% of businesses are investing more than 20% of overall technology budgets on intelligence and data analytics
• There are 60 million active business pages on Facebook
• Facebook has 5 million active advertisers on the platform.

TARGETING: Every effective audience profile starts with a fundamental understanding of who your audience is. There is an incredible amount of information about your ideal customers in social media. Social analytics helps you identify and target them to find them. For example:

• Internet users have an average of 7.6 social media accounts
• Social media users grew by 121 million between Q2 2017 and Q3 2017
• 89% of B2B marketers use content marketing strategies
• Only 20 Fortune 500 companies actually engage with their customers on Facebook, while 83% have a presence on Twitter
• People aged 55-64 are more than twice as likely to engage with branded content than those 28 or younger

CUSTOMER SERVICE: Social media is one of the most effective channels for customer support in today’s digital world. Whether they have questions, complaints, or compliments, people are increasingly using social to connect with businesses.  Here’s are some of the finding social analytics reveal:

• 90% of businesses are expected to use social media for customer service by 2020
• 78 percent of people who complain to a brand via Twitter expect a response within an hour
• 77% of Twitter users feel more positive about a brand when their Tweet has been replied to
• 67% of consumers now use social media networks like Twitter and Facebook to seek resolution for issues
• Customers spend 20-40% more with companies engage and respond to customers via social media

PREDICTING BEHAVIORS: Given this enormous volume of social media data, Social analytics benefits business using data, statistical algorithms and machine learning techniques to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based on historical data. Here’s how it’s working:

• 70% of executives consider predictive intelligence the most critical data insight
• Facebook accounts for 53.1% of social logins made by consumers to sign into the apps and websites of publishers and brands
• On average, businesses are only analyzing 12% of their data, leaving a lot of untapped opportunities and critical insights
• 29% of patients viewing health information through social media are viewing other patients’ experiences with their disease

COURSE CORRECTION: Even the best business strategy can require connection. Social analytics benefits business by connecting the dots from what people say, do, act and are likely to behave in the future. Here’s how it can help overcome challenges you may be facing.

• When social media is part of their buyer’s journey, customers tend to convert at a 129% higher rate, and they are four times as likely to spend significantly more than those without a social component
• 80% of CEOs say that mobile technology and analytics are key to their strategy
• 72% of business leaders say that their organizations will be susceptible to threats from digital market disruptions in the next three years
• 69% of organizations that have used an external partner to gain better data insight report positive results from that decision

Are these social analytics benefits useful for your business? Do the facts help? Are you ready to get get started?