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 dashboard

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 dashboard

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 dashboard

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.