Dashboarding is: the analysis and dissemination of data so it becomes a useful tool for an operator.

It’s the real-time visualization of data analysis. It can show trends, be customized per operator. An executive has a different type of dashboard than a salesperson, for example.

Not unlike the dashboard of your car, the dashboard for your business shows the vital statistics that show health, KPIs, trends, etc. At a glance, you should understand whether your business is growing, whether you’re meeting goals, etc.

It can pull from multiple data sources into one view so you’re not reliant on a reporting system from a front-end software package and combines the power of multiple fronts — it can combine social media metrics with sales metrics and web analytic metrics, for example.

Dashboarding allows the end user to customize the information in real time to show and instantly change the visualization by date, sales channel, audience type, product line, story, etc.

Tableau makes this possible*