Data and dashboards means this to me: work out which decision a dashboard has to support, clean up the sources underneath, build the screen, and train the people who will use it. A dashboard is only finished when everybody reads the same thing in a number.
What I do
- Work out which decision a dashboard has to support, and only then pick the numbers that belong on it
- Fix the definitions, so revenue, lead and conversion mean the same thing in every panel
- Connect the sources and clean up the data quality underneath: duplicate records, inconsistent spellings and empty fields
- Build in Looker Studio, Google Data Studio or PowerBI, with Google Analytics 4 as a source
- Train colleagues to read and interpret the numbers, and write the explanation down so it keeps working
Where this comes from
At Ahold Delhaize I worked in 2024 within a global marketing project on a marketing dashboard: first the requirements with the people who would use it, then the build, and finally training internal marketers and advising management. At HyperMe Marketing I helped develop a KPI dashboard alongside setting up marketing automation. At KBenP I reported on newsletters, SEO, SEA and A/B tests to the management and stakeholders of several business units.
Why this works
Most of the work is not in the chart but in the fields below it. A dashboard built on dirty data stops being opened after two weeks, and so does one nobody can read. That is why training is part of building for me.
Try it yourself
The marketing dashboard demo on this site shows how such a screen behaves: pick a period or a channel and all four panels recalculate at once.