View From The Dashboard: 4 Online Tools Businesses Will Need In 2020

Business tools have come a long way in recent years and having access to the right ones can make or break a company. Analytics programs, in particular, have grown in importance. Headed into 2020, businesses need to assess their dashboard capacities to ensure they have ready access to the right features to maintain a competitive advantage. Audience Assessment Understanding and connecting with the user audience is vital to business performance, and a good SaaS program will provide detailed audience insights. Track where customers are coming from, break them down demographically, and build a strategy that’s structured around social engagement. Most social media platforms have their own internal analytics programs, and it’s important that businesses know how to use these programs. However, it’s easier to act on these insights if they’re contextualized, which is why an adaptive, cross-functioning dashboard program is so important. The more businesses know about their audience, the more successful they’re poised to be. Data Mining Data mining tools offer businesses access to highly detailed insights with minimal back end labor, but they take some expertise to use well. Looking ahead, companies should be sure their analytics dashboards include clustering and classification tools, regression analysis, and other statistics-driven tools. These tools can provide an up-close look at the underlying patterns in customer behavior and sales, offering strategic performance insights and helping users plan smarter future campaigns. Real-Time KPIs One of the major advantages of a strong analytics dashboard is constant access to performance metrics. With that in mind, all businesses should opt for dashboard software featuring real-time KPI updates. This approach not only helps to save time, but also allows businesses to make decisions more quickly in partnership with client needs. Most importantly, reliable, real-time KPI updates can alert users to data anomalies, as well as spot patterns and measure progress toward major goals. And because dashboard programs integrate data from across multiple operations areas, real-time KPI alerts can quickly identify the source of any problem, not just that something has gone awry. Security Insights SaaS analytics programs may include a variety of internal metrics, but one thing that most leave out are security issues – they tend to focus on audience and cashflow instead. That’s why it’s worth investing in a specialized security dashboard, especially for companies in high-risk industries. FICO recently launched a Cyber Risk Score system that can predict security outcomes, though theirs isn’t the only option. Having this detailed view of business security can prevent major breaches and allow companies to update their security protocols based on industry-wide data. Adaptability And The Business Dashboard Of The Future Whatever tools a given business deems central to their dashboard, the set-up needs to be malleable. Not only should businesses be able to personalize what tools they have access to, but being able to reorganize the dashboard itself can help users process that information and engage with it more completely. It’s all about connecting major data points throughout the business and keeping the lines of communication open. When the information is all consolidated, there’s no excuse for missing a major revelation. The modern business dashboard puts success at users’ fingertips. Anna is a freelance writer, researcher, and business consultant. A columnist for Entrepreneur.com, TheNextWeb.com and more, Anna specializes in entrepreneurship, technology, and social media trends. Follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.