Best Dashboard Software in 2024

What is a Dashboard Software?

Business dashboard software are trusted for their abilities to provide companies with metrics and indices for measuring the performance of their business. Based on all objectives and set targets, you can use dashboard creation tools for identifying gaps in performance on hourly, daily, or even weekly basis.

The advantage of using dashboard reporting tools is that it gives you the freedom to customize it based on your choice. As the dashboard gets customized, you can use it for project reporting as well as managing timesheets, workflow and resources. Paid and open source dashboard software are flexible, intuitive, and robust tools that let you plan projects as well as schedule tasks with ease.

What Are the Different Types of Dashboard Creation Tools?

• Operational dashboards: This type of dashboard is used for monitoring frequently changing business processes. Updates here are very frequent and many individuals use the operational dashboards on an hourly basis for tracking progress towards achieving a target. Such dashboards are best designed for identifying performing key metrics and indices.

• Strategic dashboards: Strategic dashboards are monitoring tools used for tracking the progress of KPIs. Compared to an operational dashboard, updates in a strategic dashboard are less frequent.  The data visualizations here are simple too and such dashboards are usually accessed only once in a day.

• Analytical dashboards: Analytical dashboards support the analysis of large data volumes for investigating trends. These are also used for gaining business insights and predicting the outcome of decisions. Data updates here aren't very frequent and you will find such support features as ad-hoc queries, drill-down, etc.

Live Interactive Dashboards with Business Dashboard Software

The best paid and open source dashboard software lets you create dashboards department or service-wise. Examples enumerated in the graphic organizer below would make this further clearer. 

Open Source and Paid Dashboard Tools- Use Cases

• Data analysts who require scalable visualizations
• SaaS vendors look for white label solutions
• Enterprises handling multiple data sources need it
• SMBs also require a customer-facing dashboard to seek growth opportunities
• Companies prefer HIPAA compliance
• E-commerce businesses lookout for web analytics solutions 
• Sales professionals search for it for sales or lead generation
• Healthcare professionals need it for managing their practice
• BPOs try to assess the performance of their executives

Features& Functionalities of Dashboard Software

• Predefined templates: Predefined templates help in speeding up the entire dashboard-creating process. Prebuilt templates are important for doing fast data visualizations so that interactive dashboards can be created instantly. You can even edit such dashboards later on, using the edit dashboard feature.

• Unified style: In-built with dashboard creation tools, this enables you to apply unified changes in your data charts. These are usually in the form of charts, texts, etc., that can be applied in the form of graphs and data labels. The unified style setting option comes in handy for implementing data analytics as well as effortlessly changing the theme of a dashboard.

• Chart tooltips: Charts are considered essential for doing data visualizations. Dashboard analytics tools support tool-tips for drawing custom charts so that the same can be attached to the dashboard with ease. You can even use these tool-tips for adjusting the information available within these charts.

• Comparison period: Comparison period is an advanced feature that comes in-built into the digital dashboard software solutions. The module is specifically used for comparing the data of two different time periods to reach the right conclusion.

• Custom fields: A custom field in the dashboard creation tools is used for creating a single calculated field so that several such fields can be combined into a merged field. These dashboard tools also offer a drag and drop interface for developing such custom fields.

• Hierarchy filters: Hierarchy filters within dashboard tools are designed to help end-users access data of a specific time period. You can even set up constraint values like equal to and less than for flexibly navigating through old data.

• Power viewer: Business dashboard software's power viewer feature has been designed keeping in view such users that have to collaborate with multiple managers/ departments or big teams.

• Time interval widgets: Different graphs and charts in a dashboard can have their timescale enhanced using the time interval widget. Also, available is this drill-down functionality for assessing key performing indicators.

Evaluation Criteria for Choosing the Right Dashboard Software

• User interface: Clean and navigable interface so that both beginners and professionals can access it with ease.
• Support material: It is important to ensure that there is guidance available in the form of video tutorials, tech, and user support.
• Data updates: You need to make sure that there is an option available for exporting the data just as there needs to be an additional module available for accessing all the real-time data. 
• Customization: The interface needs to be customizable so that you can select the appearance of your dashboard at your convenience.
• Interactive charts & graphs: Interactive graphs/charts in the dashboard analytics tool make the data visualization process worth providing insights.
• Integrations: Integrations help connect the dashboard with other tools. Therefore, the integration support is an important requirement.
• Pricing: Well this is important because a digital dashboard software needs to fit your budget.

Benefits of Using Paid & Open Source Dashboard Tools

• Key values help save time: Key values are already built-in within both paid and open source dashboard software. These help with analyzing and coding all information. This saves you from the hassle of doing all coding yourself or making lengthy reports.
• Drag/drop capability for easy visualization: Drag and drop capability let you create visualized dashboards in a few simple clicks. This not only allows easy data visualization, but also helps in generating dashboard reports.
• Scheduling dashboard publications: You can easily prepare schedules using the best dashboard analytics tools. Once such a schedule is in place, you can automate the entire dashboard publication process from a single user to a group.
• Custom alerts for tracking KPIs: Key performing indicators of a business need to be regularly tracked. For accessing such KPIs easy and quick, digital dashboard software solutions let you set up custom alerts for every trigger. As soon as there is a new report, you can be assured of receiving immediate notifications.
• Team-based data views: Popular dashboard tools make it easy for every user to view only data that is relevant to them. Therefore, a team-based data view module makes it possible to only add such data as relevant to a user on the dashboard.
• Real-time updates: Dashboard software solutions let you receive immediate alerts in case there is any change made to the data in a dashboard. This feature is especially useful for identifying fluctuations in business metrics and indices.