Dashboards serve an important role for many organizations in their quest to uncover critical business insights. Organizations use dashboards in gathering business intelligence which they hope would guide them in their day-to-day decision-making.
More than just being a bunch of graphs and charts, financial dashboards actually interact with real time data in order to identify trends or risks in the horizon.
In keeping with the trend of moving to the cloud, financial dashboards are also now cloud-based.
Cloud-based financial dashboards allows its users to view data in a sensible way and drill down and through them so that it is easy to investigate what lies behind the numbers.
Now if you are looking for the best financial dashboard for your organization, here are the 10 features you should look for.
- Configurable Dashboards
The best cloud-based financial dashboards always allows you as a user to customize your dashboard so that you can look at your data in a way that makes most sense to your business. There must always be a way to configure your business into the dashboard because those one-size-fits-all dashboard never really work out well.
- Drag and Drop Capability
The best cloud-based financial dashboards have a drag and drop interface because this makes it so easy to pick the elements or parameters that you want to see on a specific page. Having this interface is the most logical and straightforward way of data display.
- Cloud-based
A cloud-based dashboard carries with it many benefits such as easy deployment and maintenance and the ability to access information anytime and anywhere in the world.
This is why the best financial dashboards are cloud-based and have generous storage.
- Improved Collaboration in the Platform
Like any accounting tool, the best cloud-based financial dashboard contain features that make collaborating internally easy. These features include the ability to comment, create customized reports easily, have automation features, and the ability to schedule individual or team reminders.
- Mobile-enabled
In today´s globalized world, people are constantly on-the-go. Finance decision makers most especially visit other sites in order to check on them which is why it is important to have a mobile-enabled financial dashboard so that you can access data anytime, anywhere using your mobile device.
- Drill-down Capabilities
The best cloud-based financial dashboard allows you to investigate the numbers and understand deeply where they are coming from through a drill down capability. This allows you to go beyond just the summary view to a detailed view.
- ERP/ LOB system integration
The best cloud-based financial dashboard must be able to plug in to your ERP system or other line of business systems so that it can read the data and you can subsequently access these data.
- Excel-friendly
You can bash MS Excel all you want but it is never going to change the fact that arguably all businesses use MS Excel to store their data. Therefore, it is not only a familiar tool, finance departments usually know their away around it. The best cloud-based financial dashboard then must always be excel-friendly. Preferably, it should not turn off any of the Excel features that most finance people are familiar with as it will make learning the tool and using the tool easy for them.
- Simultaneous User Access Capabilities
Some financial dashboards limit the number of users that can simultaneously access the system. The best cloud-based financial dashboard is generous with its simultaneous access capabilities.
- Preferences Setup
Some people are color-blind or short sighted. Some people also differ in how they want to view things and that is fine. What is important is that the financial dashboard allows you to customize your preferences so that the tool works for you. It doesn´t matter if it is an intelligent tool, if it doesn´t suit your taste, you won´t like to use it and it will defeat the purpose of it.
Performance Canvas Financial Dashboard
Performance Canvas, a complete and cloud-based FP&A solution that can be installed and setup in just 5 minutes, was recently awarded by financesonline for its great user experience and as a rising star in the SaaS budgeting and planning arena.
Performance Canvas is packed to the brim with useful BI capabilities which includes its award-winning financial dashboarding capability. It is a tool that meets all of the criteria of what constitutes as best cloud-based financial dashboard.
To know more about Performance Canvas, to see it in action or to request a free trial, visit www.performancecanvas.com or email info@dspanel.com.
DSPanel offers cutting edge technology platform for business analytics, planning, and visualization. DSPanel designs, builds, and operates with the end users in mind. Performance Canvas was created by DSPanel to answer the unarticulated needs of the market not addressed by previous available solutions. With Performance Canvas, information is transformed into valuable business insights for the business executives to utilize in their decision-making process. DSPanel currently has over 2500 organizations deploying their solutions.
