Key takeaways:

• BI dashboards are business intelligence tools that let you visualize and analyze your data.
• They use cloud-based technology to show real-time data, unlike reports that offer actionable but stale data.
• You can use your analytical skills to take advantage of BI dashboards’ insights.
• They take the guesswork out of business decision-making, which helps improve your company’s ROI.

Your business probably tracks a ton of data, right? Handling all of it can be absolutely overwhelming, but analyzing it is necessary to make the best business decisions. That’s where BI (business intelligence) dashboards come in to save the day.

Successful companies use BI dashboards to monitor and evaluate what their customers have been liking, interacting with, and making transactions on. You no longer have to read lengthy reports by Warren Buffett to understand the market. So, you want to know how to use data from a BI dashboard to amp up your business’s revenue?

In this article, we’ll introduce you to BI dashboards, how you can integrate them into your business intelligence, and explain how they help make your advertising budget go further and deliver way better results. We know a thing or two about BI dashboards, which led us to create Blueprint, Model B’s Omnichannel marketing tool that drives better performance by integrating ad planning, budgeting, and analytics.

You don’t need a Harvard degree to master this (but if you have one, don’t burn it). All you need is a few minutes. We’ll wrap all of this up with actionable advice on how to increase revenue through making data-informed decisions using the best BI dashboard example on the market.

Now on to the Burning Question – What Are BI Dashboards?

BI dashboards are interactive reporting tools that aggregate key data sets and visually represent your business’s metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). They help convert disparate information (and lots of it) into meaningful insights that give you a 360-degree view of your business’s data.

Consider BI dashboards your one-stop shop for data-led information without undergoing the toilsome task of combing through Excel spreadsheets. These dashboards collect unstructured data, analyze it, and present it according to relevant KPIs via graphs, percentages, charts, and other visuals. You can also customize analysis metrics and the interface to suit your style.

“Scientia est potentia” (Information is power) – Thomas Hobbes circa 1668.

We’ve all heard the truism that knowledge is power, which is, well, true. But, it’s really what you do with that information that is the real power. So, how do you convert insights from a BI dashboard into sweet ka-ching ($$)?

How BI Dashboards Help You Bring Home the Bacon

Robust BI dashboards (like Blueprint) can improve your company’s bottom line in multiple ways. Here’s a breakdown of five ways they can amp up your revenue (and we’re not just focusing on the types of dashboards we create).

1. Get More Customers

Acquiring a new customer can cost you up to 7x more than retaining one. You can identify high-value customers through BI dashboards and develop strategies to keep them, because. making your customers happy is the core of increasing your revenue.

2. Weed Out the Bottlenecks

If you’re more aware of customer relations and the sales team’s performance, you can decrease underlying inefficiencies. Knowing business intelligence metrics such as the average speed of answering phone calls coupled with automated, real-time reporting streamlines workflows across various departments in your business. No need to have HR continually checking on the less than efficient departments – you have the data right there.

This gets everyone on the same page. To achieve this, you will need an intuitive and accurate BI dashboard.

3. Predict the Future (Of Your Sales)

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

Knowing what you’re going to sell, when, and how much you will sell it for is the basis of a sales forecast. Data-driven business intelligence software provides historical sales records on one platform that you can leverage to predict future sales. Superior accuracy in forecasting enables you to plan your revenue better.

You can generate realistic forecasts by incorporating seasonal demand, customer trends, and outlier metrics. The slight caveat to forecasting using a BI dashboard is that you have to leverage your intelligence. Your financial analysts will have the information, though, to do just that.

4. Eliminate Vague Hypotheses About Your Campaign’s Performance

A business has multiple KPIs that change depending on the season, product, and other inherent factors in the business’ pricing structure. BI dashboards make it easier to customize relevant KPIs that dictate growth.

They let you choose KPIs you can benchmark against to determine the progress of a campaign. Accurate monitoring of KPIs eliminates the unnecessary cloud of hypotheses that usually lead firms in the wrong direction.

5. Make Your Data Work for You ($$$)

Data monetization can mean different things. In this context, we’ll use it to mean converting data into income-earning insights.

Business intelligence dashboards analyze and aggregate unstructured data from different branches. The insights you gain from the analysis enable you to stay on top of customer satisfaction, industry-relevant trends, social media interactions, high-income products, and other aspects that determine your business’s profitability.

Basically, you’ll get to marry the multiple spheres of your business without jumping through flaming hoops of data-privacy concerns. Take that Dr. Strange (we still respect you a ton, though)!

With insights into every angle of your business, you can detect areas you need to improve. Making sense of the large data troves requires your intelligent analysis, too, so maybe that Harvard degree will come in handy after all.

BI Dashboards Versus BI Reports

We’ve gone all this way waxing on about BI dashboards but what are BI reports? The two are means to achieve the same goal – increase profitability, but they do it somewhat differently. BI reports are a summary of insights generated from a business intelligence analytical tool for a specific period, usually quarterly.

BI dashboards provide real-time insights since the data collection is dynamic and Cloud-based, unlike data from static BI reports. If you have to pick one, we’d go with BI dashboards. You can generate reports from the platforms.

Target Your Ad Campaign With Precision With Blueprint

So, that’s the 411 on BI dashboards. They turn everyday info into valuable data that helps you make intelligent decisions and increase revenue. Model B’s dashboard, powered by Blueprint, provides creative ad campaigns with data that drives growth and increases conversion rates. Its AI efficiency allows your advertising dollar to do more. Its proprietary logic allows you to understand who to target with what message, across media channels, not just which platform to invest in.

Imagine being able to see your entire advertising environment, every single dollar of media spend, broken down by (1) platform, (2) audience, and (3) creative, with the cost per result front and center.

That’d be cool. Let’s talk.