Simply going with your gut to make difficult business decisions doesn’t cut it any more. These days, your strategies need to be supported by data, backed up with facts, and capable of delivering real ROI.

The good news is that we have access to more data (customer data, performance data, financial data) than at any other time in history. The bad news is that it can be hard to find the data that really matters in the ocean of “Big Data.”

Dashboards are an essential tool for making the data that really matters accessible to those that need it. They also allow your team to align around similar objectives, track success in the same ways, and focus on moving the same needles.

Want to create dashboards for your own organization? Let’s take a look at the nine principles of creating a killer dashboard.

The Value of Dashboards

Let’s first start with a definition. What’s a dashboard? A dashboard is a single screen that tracks a number of key metrics in real time. They can take many forms and perform many functions, but their core purpose is to provide access to relevant data at a glance, in a way that is easy to understand. Pretty simple, right?

So why are dashboards so important? Dashboards align your entire sales and marketing organization around the metrics you most need to track. With a well-designed dashboard, you can see:

• If you’re attracting enough leads
• How well they’re progressing through the sales cycle
• How well you’re converting them
• How much revenue is coming your way
• Where the revenue is coming from
• How your campaigns and salespeople are performing
• How happy your customers are

And that’s just a small sample. In short, if you can measure it, you can get it on a dashboard. A great dashboard is one that your sales and marketing people live inside. Great dashboards are open on screens all the time. Everyone refers to them. The most important meetings happen around them. The critical reports feed into them. A great dashboard helps streamline, automate, and accelerate the entire sales and marketing operation. Again: anything you can track, you can build into a report and then feed into your dashboard. The key is to pick the important things.

Are you convinced? Ready to start putting your data to work in your own organization? Download the free e-book to get started.