The Gap Between Beautiful and Practical Dashboards

Spoiler Alert: We prefer practical

In today’s data-driven world, most companies are flooded with reports—sales numbers from one system, finance data from another, operations metrics in yet another. Each department has its own source, its own way and timing of reporting, and sometimes even its own “beautiful” dashboards.

But here’s the challenge: too much variety and/or great visualization design don’t always equal usability.

Common Reporting Challenges

Everyone is busy, and the world (far and near) is changing at accelerating speeds. So that paradoxically, just when we need to focus on better and “faster” reporting we have less time, and things are sometimes getting scattered so it’s harder to focus and design analytics.

We often run into three main issues:

  • Messy data

  • Lots of tech reporting formats (from Excel to SAP to PowerBI etc.) that require manual updating

  • Siloed reporting.

This lack of “harmonization”, in our view, is a strategic issue spanning an organization. Most everyone is aware of these issues, and teams are working on them. Nevertheless due to the challenges mentioned it’s not easy to make real improvements on an enterprise scale. So it can be very helpful to approach improvements with a centralized/AND distributed team, and stick to a clear plan based on the “issue buckets” above.

It’s tough: data isn’t always easy to herd, and the balance between reports that are specific but also show a bigger picture to management is tricky as well. But all is worth it.

Benefits to Harmonizing

Some examples of integrating data and aligning it with a “truth goal” (typically financial reports):

  • You can see precisely a change in Sales performance (actual or predicted) can influence more efficient investment deployment e.g. in HR (FINANCE/SALES/HR)

  • Tariff management: how can we effectively analyze tariffs and unpredictability to make decisions re. long-term supply chain investment (FINANCE/PURCHASING/PRODUCTION/ IT-MRP-MPS etc.)

The goal is to bring together granular data (for example product gross margin detail at the client/region/unit detail with forecasting) in reporting that integrates information so you can

  • See what’s working

  • See what’s not

  • Make smart decisions to do more of the good stuff.

The Red Zone: Visualization

And the art to this, once the hard work has been tackled, is to balance the detail required with simplicity and practicality in visualization. Let go of all the fancy colors and bubble charts! Drill-down capability – not always but often – and exportable tables mean the ability to address different audiences and stakeholders with one report.

So to summarize:

  • DATA prepped in the context of requirements

  • Integrate/coordinate formats and cadence

  • And for the last ten yards, engage all key stakeholders for visualization improvements.

When designed this way, dashboards become more than just reports—they become decision-making engines.

Khanh Kieu