Data Analyst · Step 7 of 8 · 9 min
Dashboards and stakeholders
You can design a focused dashboard around a few KPIs and present findings people act on.
Pick the few numbers that matter
A KPI (key performance indicator) is a number that tells a team whether it is on track: weekly active customers, on-time delivery rate, revenue against target. Good KPIs are clearly defined, someone owns them, and they link to an action.
Write a definition for each one. “Active customer” can mean very different things to sales and to product. Agreeing on definitions prevents most dashboard arguments.
One question per dashboard
A dashboard should answer one main question for one audience, like “Is this week’s delivery performance on track?” for the operations lead. Put the headline KPIs at the top, trends in the middle and detail at the bottom.
Show comparisons so numbers mean something: against last period, against target. A number without context invites guesses.
Free tools to learn on
Looker Studio is free with a Google account and connects easily to Google Sheets. Power BI Desktop is a free Windows download; sharing usually needs a paid licence at work. Tableau Public is free, but everything you save there is public, so use only public data.
Learn one well. The ideas transfer between tools.
Talking to stakeholders
Lead with the answer, then the evidence, then the caveats. “Returns rose mainly in one product line; here is the trend; data for the last week is incomplete.” Keep a written summary short enough to read on a phone.
Ask for feedback early with a rough version. It is far cheaper to change a sketch than a finished dashboard nobody opens.
Try it
Build a one-page dashboard
- 1.Put your cleaned sample data (from the cleaning step) in Google Sheets.
- 2.Open Looker Studio, create a report and connect the sheet.
- 3.Add two or three KPI scorecards, one trend line and one sorted bar chart.
- 4.Give the page a title that states the single question it answers.