Data versus metrics

Question
A dashboard would be most beneficial for which of the following scenarios?

A cross functional team needs an ad-hoc update.

An analyst needs a summary of data upon request.
A consultant needs all historical data for an audit.
A project manager needs to monitor data as it becomes available.
Correct
A dashboard would be useful for monitoring data as it becomes available.

Data is great, but if we can't communicate the story data is telling, it isn't useful to
anyone. We need ways to organize data that help us turn it into information. There are
all kinds of tools out there to help you visualize and share your data analysis with
stakeholders. Here, we'll talk about two data presentation tools, reports and
dashboards. Reports and dashboards are both useful for data visualization. But there
are pros and cons for each of them. A report is a static collection of data given to
stakeholders periodically. A dashboard on the other hand, monitors live, incoming data.
Let's talk about reports first. Reports are great for giving snapshots of high-level
historical data for an organization. For example, a finance firm's monthly sales. Reports
come with a lot of benefits too. They can be designed and sent out periodically, often on
a weekly or monthly basis, as organized and easy to reference information. They're
quick to design and easy to use as long as you continually maintain them. Finally,
because reports use static data or data that doesn't change once it's been recorded,
they reflect data that's already been cleaned and sorted. There are some downsides to
keep in mind too. Reports need regular maintenance and aren't very visually appealing.
Because they aren't automatic or dynamic, reports don't show live, evolving data. For a
live reflection of incoming data, you'll want to design a dashboard. Dashboards are
great for a lot of reasons, they give your team more access to information being
recorded, you can interact through data by playing with filters, and because they're
dynamic, they have long-term value. If stakeholders need to continually access
information, a dashboard can be more efficient than having to pull reports over and
over, which is a big-time saver for you. Last but not least, they're just nice to look at. But
dashboards do have some cons too. For one thing, they take a lot of time to design and
can actually be less efficient than reports, if they're not used very often. If the base table
breaks at any point, they need a lot of maintenance to get back up and running again.
Dashboards can sometimes overwhelm people with information too. If you aren't used
to looking through data on a dashboard, you might get lost in it. As a data analyst, you
need to decide the best way to communicate information to your stakeholders. For
example, what if your stakeholders are interested in the company's social media
engagement? Would a monthly report that tells them the number of new followers for
their page be useful? Or a dashboard that monitors live social media engagement
across multiple platforms? Later on, you'll create your own reports and dashboards to
practice using these tools. But for now, I want to show you what a report and a
dashboard might look like. We'll start by using a tool we're already familiar with,
spreadsheets. Let's see one-way spreadsheet data could be visualized in a report. This
spreadsheet has a data set with order details from a wholesale company. That's a lot of
information. From the headers, we can see different things recorded here, like the order
date, the salesperson, the unit price, and revenue for each transaction recorded. It's all
useful information, but a little hard to wrap your head around. We want a report that's
easier to read. Let's say your stakeholders want a quick look at the revenue by
salesperson. Using the data, you could make them a pivot table with a graph that shows
that information. A pivot table is a data summarization tool that is used in data
processing. Pivot tables are used to summarize, sort, re-organize, group, count, total, or
average data stored in a database. It allows its users to transform columns into rows
and rows into columns. We'll actually learn more about pivot tables later. But I'll show
you one really quick. We'll select the Data menu and click Pivot table button. It can pull
data from this table. We can just press create and it'll pull up a new worksheet. Over
here, it gives us the pivot table fields we can choose from. Click select, salesperson and
revenue. Just like that, it made a chart for us. At this point, you can play around with
how the graph looks, but the information is all there. Let's move on to dashboards. If you
need a more dynamic way to share information with your stakeholders, dashboards are
your friend. You might create something like this Tableau dashboard. With interactive
graphs that showcase multiple views of the data. With this, users can change location,
date range, or any other aspect of the data they're viewing by clicking through different
elements on the dashboard. Pretty cool, right? Later in this program, we'll look into how
you can make your own data visualizations. We have a lot to learn before we get to that.
But I hope this was an exciting first peek at the different visualization tools you'll be
using as a data analyst.
Data versus metrics
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In the last video, we learned how you can visualize your data using reports and
dashboards to show off your findings in interesting ways. In one of our examples, the
company wanted to see the sales revenue of each salesperson. That specific
measurement of data is done using metrics. Now, I want to tell you a little bit more
about the difference between data and metrics. And how metrics can be used to turn
data into useful information.

A metric is a single, quantifiable type of data that can be used for measurement . Think
of it this way. Data starts as a collection of raw facts, until we organize them into
individual metrics that represent a single type of data.

Metrics can also be combined into formulas that you can plug your numerical data into.
In our earlier sales revenue example, all that data doesn't mean much unless we use a
specific metric to organize it. So, let's use revenue by individual salesperson as our
metric. Now we can see whose sales brought in the highest revenue. Metrics usually
involve simple math. Revenue, for example, is the number of sales multiplied by the
sales price. Choosing the right metric is key.

Data contains a lot of raw details about the problem we're exploring. But we need the
right metrics to get the answers we're looking for. Different industries will use all kinds of
metrics to measure things in a data set. Let's look at some more ways businesses in
different industries use metrics. So you can see how you might apply metrics to your
collected data.

Companies use this metric all the time. ROI, or Return on Investment is essentially a
formula designed using metrics that let a business know how well an investment is
doing. The ROI is made up of two metrics, the net profit over a period of time and the
cost of investment. By comparing these two metrics, profit and cost of investment, the
company can analyze the data they have to see how well their investment is doing. This
can then help them decide how to invest in the future and which investments to
prioritize. We see metrics used in marketing too. For example, metrics can be used to
help calculate customer retention rates, or a company's ability to keep its customers
over time. Customer retention rates can help the company compare the number of
customers at the beginning and the end of a period to see their retention rates. This way
the company knows how successful their marketing strategies are and if they need to
research new approaches to bring back more repeat customers.

Different industries use all kinds of different metrics. But there's one thing they all have
in common: they're all trying to meet a specific goal by measuring data.
This metric goal is a measurable goal set by a company and evaluated using metrics.
And just like there are a lot of possible metrics, there are lots of possible goals too.

Maybe an organization wants to meet a certain number of monthly sales, or maybe a

certain percentage of repeat customers.

By using metrics to focus on individual aspects of your data, you can start to see the
story your data is telling. Metric goals and formulas are great ways to measure and
understand data. But they're not the only ways. We'll talk more about how to interpret
and understand data throughout this course.
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1.
Question 1

Overview

Previously, you were introduced to the data management tool known as a dashboard. In this self-
reflection, you’ll examine different kinds of dashboards and consider how they are used by data
analysts and their employers.

As a refresher, a dashboard is a single point of access for managing a business's information. It

allows analysts to pull key information from data in a quick review by visualizing the data in a way
that makes findings easy to understand. 

This self-reflection will help you develop insights into your own learning and prepare you to connect
your knowledge of dashboards to what you know about business needs. As you answer questions—
and come up with questions of your own—you will consider concepts, practices, and principles to
help refine your understanding and reinforce your learning. You’ve done the hard work, so make
sure to get the most out of it: This reflection will help your knowledge stick!

Types of dashboards

For a refresher, consider the different types of dashboards a business may use. Often, businesses
will tailor a dashboard for a specific purpose. The three most common categories are:

 Strategic: focuses on long term goals and strategies at the highest level of metrics
 Operational: short-term performance tracking and intermediate goals
 Analytical: consists of the datasets and the mathematics used in these sets
Strategic dashboards

A wide range of businesses use strategic dashboards when evaluating and aligning their strategic
goals. These dashboards provide information over the longest time frame—from a single financial
quarter to years. 
They typically contain information that is useful for enterprise-wide decision-making. Below is an
example of a strategic dashboard which focuses on key performance indicators (KPIs) over a year.

Operational dashboards

Operational dashboards are, arguably, the most common type of dashboard. Because these
dashboards contain information on a time scale of days, weeks, or months, they can provide
performance insight almost in real-time. 

This allows businesses to track and maintain their immediate operational processes in light of their
strategic goals. The operational dashboard below focuses on customer service.

Resolutions are divided between first call resolution (61%) and unresolved calls (9%)
 Analytical dashboards

Analytic dashboards contain a vast amount of data used by data analysts. These dashboards
contain the details involved in the usage, analysis, and predictions made by data scientists. 

Certainly the most technical category, analytic dashboards are usually created and maintained by
data science teams and rarely shared with upper management as they can be very difficult to
understand. The analytic dashboard below focuses on metrics for a company’s financial
performance.

Contains Return on assets, wrong capital ratio, and balance sheet

Reflection

Consider the different types of dashboards: 

 How are the different types of dashboards similar to each other?

 In what ways do they differ?
Write 2-3 sentences (40-60 words) in response to each of these questions. Type your response in
the text box below.

1 / 1 point

Dashboards are similar to each other in the way that they performed same goals and visualization
which is to summarize all transaction that are easily to understand. They set goals and you can see
it on dashboard if you achieved it or not. They are different to each other in how they are
represented by their visualization. I noticed that their visualization somehow depends on it's purpose

Correct
 Great work reinforcing your learning with a thoughtful self-reflection! A few commonalities in these
examples include: 

 Dashboards are visualizations: Visualizing data can be enormously useful for understanding and
demonstrating what the data really means.  
 Dashboards identify metrics: Relevant metrics may help analysts assess company performance.
Some differences include the timeframe described in each dashboard.  The operational dashboard
has a timeframe of days and weeks, while the strategic dashboard displays the entire year. The
analytic dashboard skips a specific timeframe. Instead, it identifies and tracks the various KPIs that
may be used to assess strategic and operational goals.

2.
Question 2

Now that you have considered the different types of dashboards, think about the impact that
dashboards can have on a company:

 What is an example of a data source a company might use with a dashboard?

 How would a company benefit from a dashboard that uses this data?
 What industries or businesses might benefit from using dashboards more than others?
Now, write 2-3 sentences (40-60 words) in response to each of these questions. Type your response
in the text box below. 

1 / 1 point

The example of data source they might use is their expenses and sales. They can track their
expenses and sales through dashboard if their expenses is above the actual budget also in their
sales. It will benefit the company because it will helps them to have a good visualization of the flow
of their transaction.

Correct

Thank you for your response! Dashboards can help companies perform many helpful tasks, such as:

 Track historical and current performance.

 Establish both long-term and/or short-term goals.
 Define key performance indicators or metrics.
 Identify potential issues or points of inefficiency.
While almost every company can benefit in some way from using a dashboard, larger companies
and companies with a wider range of products or services will likely benefit more. Companies
operating in volatile, or swiftly changing markets like marketing, sales, and tech also tend to more
quickly gain insights and make data-informed decisions.

3.
Question 3

Finally, think about the person you had your data conversation with in the last activity. Based on the
notes you took during that conversation:

 Which types of dashboards would you recommend for your conversation partner’s data needs?
 How would the dashboards you recommend help them better accomplish their goals?
Then, write 2-3 sentences (40-60 words) in response to each of these questions. Type your
response in the text box below.
1 / 1 point

I would recommend the financial performance dashboard because it caters the need of what they
need in their financial performance. This helps teams stay aligned around their goals, and achieve
the objectives they've set out at the beginning of a business cycle.

Correct

Great work reinforcing your learning with a thoughtful self-reflection! In this response, you should
have applied what you have learned about dashboards so far to the conversation you had in the
previous self-reflection activity.

Dashboards can provide convenient access to information and analytics and are easy to use in
collaboration. Moreover, they may be tailored to the specific needs of the businesses, like tracking
performance towards a milestone.

Using a previous example of the ice cream store, the store owner might use an operational
dashboard to track their day-to-day sales. Meanwhile, they might use a strategic dashboard to
decide whether they have enough capacity to expand their business.