Reports, Dashboards, Metrics

Question 1

What are two tools to share analysis with stakeholders?

Answer 1

• Reports
• Dashboards

Question 2

What is a report?

Answer 2

A static collection of data given to stakeholders periodically

Question 3

What is a dashboard

Answer 3

A dashboard monitors live, incoming data

Question 4

What are pros of reports?

Answer 4

• Good for giving high level historical data
• Easy to design
• Pre-cleaned and sorted data

Question 5

What are the cons of reports?

Answer 5

• Continual maintenance
• Less visually appealing
• Static

Question 6

What are the pros of dashboards?

Answer 6

• Dynamic
• Automatic
• Interactive
• More stakeholder access
• Low maintenance
• Visually appealing

Question 7

What are the cons of dashboards?

Answer 7

• Labor intensive design
• Can be confusing
• Data is potentially uncleaned
• Can overwhelm people with information

Question 8

What is a pivot table?

Answer 8

A data summarization tool that is used in data processing. Pivot tables are used to summarize, sort, re-organize, group, count, total or average data stored in a database.

Question 9

What is a metric?

Answer 9

• A single, quantifiable type of data that can be used for measurement
• They usually involve simple math
• They can be used in formulas

Example
Revenue=# Sales x Sales Price
ROI=Net Profit/Cost of Investment –An example of two metrics

Question 10

What is a metric goal?

Answer 10

A measurable goal set by a company and evaluated using metrics

Example
Meet x number of monthly sales
Meet % of repeat customers

Question 11

How does data become a metric?

Answer 11

1. Data starts as a collection of raw facts
2. Then we organize them into individual metrics that represent a single type of data

Example of a metric
Revenue by Sales Person

Question 12

What are three types of Dashboards?

Answer 12

1. Strategic
2. Operational
3. Analytical

Question 13

What is a strategic dashboard?

Answer 13

• Focuses on long term goals and strategies at the highest level of metrics
• These dashboards provide information over the longest time frame from a single financial quarter to years.
• They typically contain information that is useful for enterprise-wide decision-making. For example, KPI’s.

Question 14

What is an operational dashboard?

Answer 14

• These dashboards contain information on a time scale of days, weeks, or months, they can provide performance insight almost in real-time.
• These are, arguably, the most common type of dashboard.
• Allows businesses to track and maintain their immediate operational processes in light of their strategic goals. For example, monitoring customer service.

Question 15

What is an analytic dashboard?

Answer 15

• An analytic dashboard contains a vast amount of data used by data analysts
• These dashboards contain the details involved in the usage, analysis, and predictions made by data scientists.
• The most technical type of dashboard
• Usually created and maintained by data science teams and rarely shared with upper management as they can be very difficult to understand. For example, metrics for a company’s financial performance.