Purpose of Sales Dashboards Tech companies use Sales Dashboards to enable managers with self-service and real time insights to key sales performance data. When used as part of good business practices in Sales and Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) departments, an organization can improve its revenues and sales strategies, and it can reduce the chances that leaders suffer from delayed or poor decisions because of lack of insight to the company's performance.
Example of a Sales Dashboard Here is an example of a Sales Dashboard with trends, product and customer metrics.
Who Uses This Type of Dashboard? The typical users of this type of dashboard are: Executives, Sales Managers, Sales Teams, Product Managers, Customer Account Managers. Other Reports Often Used in Conjunction with Sales Dashboards Progressive Sales and Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) departments sometimes use several different Sales Dashboards, along with detailed sales reports, profit & loss reports, financial dashboards, sales forecasts, annual budgets and other management and control tools.
Where Does the Data for Analysis Originate From? The Actual (historical transactions) data typically comes from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like: Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC), Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Sage Intacct, Sage 100, Sage 300, Sage 500, Sage X3, SAP Business One, SAP ByDesign, Acumatica, Netsuite and others. In analyses where budgets or forecasts are used, the planning data most often originates from in-house Excel spreadsheet models or from professional corporate performance management (CPM/EPM) solutions.
What Tools are Typically used for Reporting, Planning and Dashboards? Examples of business software used with the data and ERPs mentioned above are:
- Native ERP report writers and query tools
- Spreadsheets (for example Microsoft Excel)
- Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools (for example Solver)
- Dashboards (for example Microsoft Power BI and Tableau)
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TAGS: Reporting, Planning, Forecasting, Analysis, Budgeting, CPM, KPIs, ERP, Dashboards, Industry, Financial Reporting, Template Library