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Is the Dashboard Dying?

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Is the Dashboard Dying?

While dashboards are one of many methods, there are situations when a dashboard is still the best tool to assist in making the correct choices.

Dashboards are associated with analytics. It moved us away from the early days of legacy reporting when IT was the only data specialist. But they also spawned a plethora of modern-day corporate issues.

Some of the annoying issues with dashboards are that they constantly change user processes, learn new skills, and dig through comprehensive data too frequently with too many unconnected insights. And how about those executive meetings where a dashboard is an ineffective tool?

Is a dashboard a waste of time or not?

As a consequence, analytics are moving away from dashboards. Apps help us react to emails, find new music, and even monitor our health plans and health goals. Companies design software that predicts cancellations and no-shows based on past data. However, Gartner expects that these dashboards will be obsolete in the future. Incoming automation will take over, and they’ll dynamically create insights adapted to a user’s demands. This allows anybody in the company to get insight from data professionals.

What if the issue with standalone dashboards is that they are merely an app? What if we could give dashboards a curated blend of particular, practical data insights — to users at their point of consumption?

A new way of thinking about dashboards and analytics.

The user’s workflow and context must come first, followed by the insights required — and their presentation. Dashboards are one of many methods to communicate data insights to knowledgeable workers. Still, there are situations when a dashboard is still the best tool to assist leaders and employees in making the correct choices.

Quick decision-making knowledge

The dashboard in our cars is one of the first instances of a dashboard, and it does its functions well.

Why? Behind the wheel, drivers constantly judge speed, braking, steering, road conditions, and even the vehicle’s condition. If made simply on intuition, these judgments may have life-altering consequences without supporting facts. Dashboards are vital in a vehicle. It presents several parameters that drivers may quickly assess and utilize to adjust the vehicle in real-time.

In many other real-time business contexts, the dashboard is the best approach to incorporate data insights. We see great dashboards with utilities wanting to measure usage, emergency rooms that must monitor supplies and patient diagnoses, warehousing coordination of thousands of items, truck deliveries, and customers.

In each of these cases, we require a selected collection of particular insights to act. Dashboards may let employees quickly get real-time information, make choices, perform an action and repeat the ongoing processes of a business.

Assisting teams in dashboard action

Before COVID, many business people passed by TVs showing firm KPI dashboards. While many organizations have returned or are returning to the office — others will use online conference rooms, collaboration tools, and corporate portals to interact. These shared workspaces are a great area to include data insights in dashboards.

Shared dashboards are ideal for group analytics for two reasons:

First, dashboards show the same stats regardless of the viewer. This keeps groups on the same page. Employees may monitor their progress together. Boards may advise CEOs to use the same measures. Public corporations must give particular quarterly figures (typically in raw tables), so public investors may compete.

Second, asynchronous shared dashboards keep teams aware of vital but less urgent information depending on their particular processes. This allows teams to behave as one, such as at a meeting. Others who merely need to be informed may concentrate on their task without being distracted. Finally, everyone stays on the same page, working at their own speed.

Using analytics at work

With each new generation of analytics and business intelligence, we grow closer to using data to make choices. This is why we must constantly emphasize people’s workflows and consumption points, not the other way around.

Consider analysts who interpret data. It’s their primary app, not a different one. So they should be using analytics and BI tools. A dashboard might help salespeople receive a quick snapshot of their quota progress or which accounts to follow up with when they first log into their CRM.

Dashboards, at a glance, may be vital for physicians, mechanics, and facility managers. In each case, the dashboard provides valuable information depending on the user’s workflow and environment.

Finally, how we display data insights is a decision. Going beyond the dashboard doesn’t imply we don’t need IT-led reporting in some instances.

Simple future: Find out where knowledge workers are working, and then give ideas that can help them. The dashboard is the best option in certain circumstances, and we’ll know because people will utilize it and make better judgments. This is just common sense for our uncommon times. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Is the Dashboard Dying? was originally published on Calendar.com on Oct. 15, 2022, by Hunter Meine. Featured Image: Josh Sorenson; Pexels.com; Thank you!

Using Wi-Fi Analytics to Improve Your Customer Experience

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Using Wi-Fi Analytics to Improve Your Customer Experience

Offering your customers free Wi-Fi is one way to make your customers’ experiences more comfortable and convenient. It’s also a gateway to a data goldmine you can use to drive repeat visits and improve your location’s offerings. With Wi-Fi analytics, your business can create highly targeted email campaigns, optimize staff scheduling, and gather in-store behavioral insights.

Capturing customer behaviors through your guest Wi-Fi allows you to see real-time data, something that many businesses are already doing. A Harvard Business Review study found that 58% of businesses used customer analytics to increase retention and loyalty. Real-time analytics were viewed as extremely important to improving the customer experience by 60% of companies.

Real-time data can reveal how much time customers are spending in your location(s) and how long they’re lingering in various areas. You can track who’s visiting your storefront for the first time and what percentage of first-time visitors come back. Wi-Fi analytics has the power to show heavy and slow traffic times and which customers are churn risks. As highlighted below, this type of data can pivot your customer experience from average to exemplary.  

Adjust Your Staffing Levels

It’s happened to just about everyone. You go to a restaurant with the expectation you’ll be in and out within an hour or so. But when you arrive, it’s obvious the staff is overwhelmed and can’t keep up. You can either deal with the long wait times and poor experience or leave and find another place to eat.

Wi-Fi analytics can help your business avoid these types of scenarios by syncing foot traffic data with your scheduling software. By seeing how many customers log into your guest network during different times, you can adjust your employees’ schedules accordingly. If the data shows peak traffic times are between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., more staff can be scheduled then to meet demand. Your clients will be less likely to experience substandard service and delays.

If you operate more than one location, real-time data can reveal similarities and differences between them. Say your hair salon on the west side of town is constantly busy in the evenings. Your east side location tapers off during this time, but both locations experience high volume in the mornings. To help improve customers’ experiences, you could shift some employees from the east to the west location in the evenings.

Segment Customer Personas

Public Wi-Fi portal agreements are an opportunity to learn more about your customers’ demographics. These agreements are also an effective way to gather email addresses and build databases for digital marketing campaigns. Although some businesses simply let visitors accept terms and conditions to sign in, they’re missing out on valuable information.

By asking for some personal information during the sign-in process, you can learn about your clients’ characteristics. Data points like gender, age range, and zip code will allow you to start segmenting your customer base into various personas. You’ll also see whether the majority of your visitors fall into certain demographic categories, such as male or female. This kind of information could change the way you offer services or the types of products you carry.

Asking customers for their email addresses and permission to communicate with them enhances your personalization efforts. You can combine their purchase and on-premise behaviors with their demographics to deliver tailored messages. These touchpoints can encourage them to come back by suggesting complementary services and products. You can also use these messages to nurture the relationship with personalized offers and rewards for feedback about their visits.

Track Conversion Rates

Businesses that track conversions effectively send targeted promotions to customer segments via text message and email. People can look at the details through an online link and redeem offers at the physical location using a barcode. Once staff scan the barcode on a customer’s mobile device, the business can log which individuals converted.

Conversion rates for individualized or segmented offers tell a business a few things. They let the company know whether those customers found value in the promotion and whether it led to purchases. Conversion rates also reveal whether the messaging about the promotion did its job. This information gives the business the opportunity to target those who didn’t convert with different messaging or offers.

Wi-Fi analytics help you personalize offers after customers’ visits based on some key behaviors. This includes how long they browse in certain areas, how often they visit, and what times they come in. Your business has a greater chance of increasing conversion rates with offers that match those behaviors. A nail bar, for instance, can send a discount mini-pedicure offer to individuals who tend to stop by on their lunch break.

Identify Churn Risk

When customers stop purchasing from you, it can be because they no longer need what you offer. It can also be due to a bad experience or frustration with your processes. While customer surveys can identify some of these problems, their reach is often limited. McKinsey & Company reports that the typical customer experience survey captures only 7% of an organization’s customers.

As the report outlines, combining real-time data with other information can pinpoint customers who are at high risk of churn. For example, customers might browse your website for items to pick up later at your location. The website indicates the products they want are available, but when customers arrive at your location, they learn they’re out of stock.

Some clients might overlook this error on the first or second visit. Others won’t and will start looking for alternatives. By identifying individuals in the latter category, you can seize opportunities to implement recovery methods, such as reaching out to offer a discount on their next purchase. You could also offer to order the out-of-stock item(s) with express shipping to their home.

The power of using Wi-Fi analytics to improve your service processes lies in its real-time data. This information provides insights into how clients are responding to your business as they interact with it. When combined with other data, customers’ immediate and often unspoken feedback can lead to the creation of a superior customer experience.

How Analytics Can Help Your Small Business

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How Analytics Can Help Your Small Business

In our increasingly digital age, it can be all too easy for a small business owner to become overwhelmed by a sudden glut of available data. It seems like every new gadget or operations upgrade connects to the internet and includes an opportunity to accurately measure something or other to which they previously gave very little thought.

Some business owners make the rookie mistake of collecting as much data as possible, meticulously entering it into spreadsheets, and more or less leaving it at that. Successful entrepreneurs, on the other hand, understand that increased opportunities for data collection can be helpful, but only when those analytics are leveraged. Simply stated, they know the difference between raw data and actionable data.

The time to be impressed by internet-enabled devices that spit out new forms of previously uncollectible data is over. Small business owners, in particular, need to bring an increased level of discernment to data that’s merely “cool” vs. data that can help them increase efficiency and profits.

The best place to start is not by compiling all the data available to you but instead pausing long enough to write down a few simple questions. Only after you’ve decided which questions you’d like to answer can you begin to assess which analytics might actually prove helpful. Listed below are four questions just about any small business owner can adopt or adapt, along with pointers for how newer forms of data can help provide actionable answers.

1. Where are we wasting time?

The difference between time and money is that money can be replaced. Business owners and managers should be setting the tone in terms of effective time management during office hours. When management consistently demonstrates respect for the value of time, that attitude tends to filter down to the frontline staff. Conversely, managers who call meetings for no apparent reason can’t reasonably expect employees to place much value on anyone’s time.

Nowadays, there are many scheduling apps that include reporting features that will allow you to more effectively track how you’re spending time and whether or not that investment is paying off. For example, time-tracking analytics can be cross-referenced against customer billing numbers to assess ROI. This relatively simple exercise can be eye-opening in terms of surfacing high-maintenance individuals who, as it turns out, are not contributing all that much to revenue. 

Is the relationship worth the ongoing effort? Time-reporting analytics can help you decide whether to limit specific client contact to certain levels of time commitment or not.

2. Which demographics are falling away?

An investment in customer relationship management (CRM) software can provide individualized feedback on customer preferences, allowing your business to tailor its offerings accordingly. Marketing campaigns can be tweaked to highlight products and services that seem to strike a chord with your regulars. Emails can include a higher degree of personalization. Special events can be designed to respond to feedback.

Additionally, CRM data can chart changes in your customer base and help you do a little exploration. For example, visits to your salon by your 50+ customers may have driven the lion’s share of high-end sales, but those visits have declined precipitously. Is the falloff in any way related to how your business is operating in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic? Or did your product or service line shift such that your more mature customers are no longer interested? 

If the latter, are you OK with that shift? Analytics provided by just about any CRM package should provide the data you need to analyze who your customers are, what they care about, and how you can tailor your business to their needs.

3. At what point do our website visitors lose interest?

Website analytics, in particular, are one area where it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of available data. This is where your ability to formulate relevant, niche-specific questions before you start excavating data is most likely to save you from being over-informed and under-actioned. In particular, owners of appointment-based need to pay close attention to website bounce rates and abandoned scheduling forms.

Did you lose the booking when they read your terms and conditions or when you requested prepayment? Was the user confused by being presented with too many options too soon? Website analytics can provide the when, but you might need to investigate further to find the why.

If, for example, you notice a high bounce rate on a website resource that features one of your most popular offerings, that definitely merits a closer look. The problem might be tied to something as complex as mobile browser compatibility or something as easy to fix as a lousy photo. As you study online analytics, scan for any anomalies as your first step.

4. What do our Wi-Fi analytics reveal about peak business hours?

By encouraging customers to freely use your on-premises Wi-Fi, you can learn a lot. What days and times of the week see the most walk-in traffic? You can use this information to make sure you have enough staff on hand to serve these impromptu clients.

If users sign on via their social media accounts, you can glean further insights from demographic data. Are certain age groups more apt to patronize your business at certain times of day? You can tailor everything from promotions to in-office music choices accordingly.

Proceed with caution, though. There’s a fine balance to be struck between using Wi-Fi analytics to enhance your bottom line and being too nosy. Customers are growing increasingly wary of the data that any service provider collects, so you’ll want to be proactive about this. 

A simple disclaimer informing customers that you collect data to enhance their experience with your business is typically sufficient. Not every customer will agree to your terms and conditions, but many will, thereby helping you increase the overall effectiveness of your staffing and outreach.

Analytics can be powerful tools … or they can be powerful distractions.

There is no denying that objective, empirical data is a good thing. The question every business owner needs to address is whether or not specific forms of data can be utilized to foster growth. Depending on the niche you occupy, newer forms of analytics might be interesting but not helpful. Focus on data that facilitates needed changes.

Don’t fall into the trap of collecting and charting data merely for the sake of collecting and charting data. As you encounter newer forms of analytics that can be conducted, stop and ask yourself whether you should. By keeping an ongoing log of relevant business issues you hope to address with data, your data-sifting process will become much simpler.

Calendar Analytics Tell How You Use Your Time

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Calendar Analytics Tell How You Use Your Time

How are you using your time at work? How are you using your time at home? If you don’t measure these analytics on yourself — you really don’t know! Did you make your to-do list for today? Is a to-do list the way you measure your success — a checked-off list? But what if you really took ten times longer to do — or accomplish that to-do list than you really wanted to take? You won’t know the answers to these questions in your life and work unless you use Calendar Analytics to tell you the truth about yourself.

Calendar Analytics Tell How You Use Your Time

Did you know that businesses waste an estimated $37 billion on ineffective meetings annually? Yes, that’s billions, not millions, of dollars lost simply due to inefficiency. You can keep yourself and your business out of the equation by using Calendar to master your time management.

Every time you use your Calendar to plan meetings, track hours, or organize your day, it’s working behind the scenes to make time management easier for you. The secret is Calendar Analytics, part of your dashboard that calculates how you’re using your time. With this insight, you can better tell how your time should be spent to be more productive and efficient:

Meeting Distribution

Start by looking at the distribution of your meetings. When you plan a meeting in your Calendar, it gets archived into an analytics bank. With enough data, you will be able to see where you’re spending the most time and will be able to make adjustments accordingly.

For example, you might look at your time analytics and see that half of your meetings are set up with your sales team. You might not have noticed the attention you’ve been giving one department over the others and can take the steps necessary to plan more meetings with your other teams.

Your Calendar will also keep track of meeting size as well as the rate at which invitees accept or reject your meeting invitations. These numbers will help you organize more effective meetings and save time doing so.

Location Recommendations

You can waste up to 30 minutes a day simply looking for a place to hold a meeting. While picking the right location is rewarding, all that lost time will hurt you in the long run. With Calendar Analytics, you can save that time and put it to better use.

When you plan a meeting in your Calendar, include the location where it takes place.  Your Calendar will track where your meetings occur most frequently and will make recommendations to you based on when and where your next meetings are located.

After a little bit, Calendar Analytics will develop a system that will save you plenty of time when it comes to planning meetings — and executing on your plan. The time you would spend looking for the perfect restaurant to meet a client can instead be used to prepare your sales pitch or respond to the last of your emails.

People Analytics

Just as important as how you’re spending your time is who you’re spending it with. People analytics show who you’re meeting with the most by analyzing the people invited to your Calendar events. As an example, you might realize that you haven’t scheduled a one-to-one meeting with one of your employees in a while, and they’re due for a meeting with you.

People analytics, like all time management tools, extends beyond the office. How much time are you spending with your spouse and family? If you see their ranking drop on your list of people you’ve been meeting with, it’s time to plan some more family activities to improve your work-life balance.

Time Balance

Speaking of balance, there’s nothing time analytics do better than help you get your life on track. Anywhere you feel like your efforts need to be focused better can use the help of time analytics to tighten up. Whether that’s spending more time with family or getting more exercise, your Calendar can help you.

Keep track of when you complete certain activities and their duration. The more you’re able to track, the better. For example, tracking the hours you spend watching Netflix will give you concrete evidence that you’re spending more time on the couch than you’d like. Use the information you find from evidence to change your life by scheduling your time differently. Lower your binge-watching time by adding time to read or go on a walk in your Calendar to replace it.

Your Calendar will display your time usage in percentages at first glance, but you can look at the hours and minutes you spend in particular meetings and activities as well. Set goals on what you want to accomplish, like a certain number of hours spent at the park with your kids a week, and use your analytics to gauge your progress.

Team Analytics

Calendar analytics work so much better when your whole team is on board. Everyone’s Calendars will work together to make team meetings a breeze and office productivity increase. As a leader, you’ll be able to direct your employees so much better with personalized time analytics for each person.

Make sure you’re scheduling those one-on-one meetings with your employees with regularity. Have them come prepared with their Calendar analytics. An overview is fine if they have personal family information included in their Calendar. Talk with them about how their time is being used and how they can improve. Perhaps they need a better morning schedule or to pick a closer restaurant for their next lunch break.

In addition, you can share your Calendar as an example of how time analytics helps you use your time more effectively. For this to be an effective teaching moment, you need to be using your Calendar diligently; otherwise, you won’t make much of an impact. Strive to set the example with time management as the leader of your organization.

You’ll be amazed by everything you’re able to accomplish by using Calendar analytics to structure your everyday life. Not only will you be able to fit so much more into your schedule, but you’ll also feel less stressed as you plan things out and create the perfect balance.

Calendar Analytics Tell How You Use Your Time was originally published on Calendar by Hunter Meine.

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