Top 10 Essential Features Of A BI Dashboard Solution. Part 1 of 2

At first glance, all modern BI dashboard solutions are dazzlers, regardless of the underlying technology and the people who built them. If you explore beyond the facade, significant differences in capabilities emerge. The many deployment platforms in the marketplace of the best dashboard software each have strengths and weakness. Very few are great all-around performers. As well, a rich feature set is not sufficient. If engineers and analysts cannot create or maintain dashboard applications rapidly and efficiently, the platform will deliver inferior business value.

Interactive visualizations in popular browsers

At a minimum, the platform must provide a rich set of HTML5- and JavaScript-based charts. Client-side interactive visualizations should include heat maps, gauges, geographic maps, waterfall charts, and other advanced visualizations; interactive data tables with in-cell graphics; and grouped, cross-tab reports with drill-down and drill-through. Self-service BI capabilities that enable end-users to create and configure visualizations without technical assistance are extremely useful.

Mobile support

Dashboards are used frequently on mobile devices, which means small screens require separate web pages to make information comprehensible. Support for touch interactions is becoming a de facto requirement.

Web-based architecture

Dashboards must be easy to deploy and scale without limits on industry-standard platforms. Applications must be agnostic with respect to hosting infrastructures (e.g., on-premise, remote data center or cloud services such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure). Proprietary, in-house deployment technologies are yesterday's news and should be avoided.

Access data in any format, in any location

Useful BI dashboard solutions are usually a single view of data sourced from multiple applications, databases or files. Connections, extractions, and integrations across sources should not require building intermediate warehouses or complex data models. Everything developers need should be available out-of-the-box for real-time dashboards.

Rapid development environment

A BI dashboard feature-rich platform isn't useful if it lacks a development toolset that enables hyper-efficient creation and maintenance of dashboard applications. When fewer engineers work faster, the business ROI is higher. The KPI dashboard goes directly to the bottom line.

ChristianSteven Software brings two decades of business intelligence expertise to the table when helping companies to define, create and implement business intelligence solutions. Stay tuned for part two of this blog where we will discuss more about business intelligence dashboard software.