Welcome to the world of Platform Analytics using the Now Platform from ServiceNow. As experts in the field, we understand the immense power of the Now Platform and the importance of staying up to date with all the information it provides. Our platform analytics dashboards are designed to help you increase your productivity and stay focused on your business goals.
In this article, our goal is to provide you with leading practices to optimize Platform Analytics. We acknowledge that it can be challenging to distinguish valuable information from irrelevant noise, which is why we are here. To help you be more productive. One of the biggest disappointments in dashboard creation is creating one that is never used. Even if you have spent considerable time creating data visualizations, mining the data, and adding filtering capabilities, it may still not be successful. Let us talk about the whys and how to overcome these challenges.
1. Understand your audience
To optimize the use of Platform Analytics, it is crucial to have a deep understanding of your audience. By speaking to the end-users and learning about their requirements, you can determine their success criteria, how data analytics can help them, and how they plan to use the tool you are building.
Practically, it means creating dashboards that align with what they want out of the data, such as operational or strategic. You should also consider the date range most beneficial to them and how they plan to use the dashboard. Let us use an HR (Human Resources) team as an example. Their operational dashboard could show metrics like employee turnover by month, while a strategic dashboard could focus on long-term trends such as workforce diversity. By understanding their needs and goals, you can ensure that your dashboard provides valuable insights that align with their priorities and helps them make informed decisions.
The altitude determines the perspective from which data is analyzed in categorized dashboards. The four categories of dashboards are:
Operational Dashboard
An operational dashboard offers real-time data and insights to assist users in monitoring and managing daily business operations. This type of dashboard is usually utilized by front-line staff who require prompt decision-making abilities based on the data. Examples of operational dashboards are a call center dashboard that exhibits the number of calls in line, average wait time, and agent availability or a manufacturing dashboard that demonstrates the production line's status, inventory levels, and machine uptime.
Tactical Dashboard
A tactical dashboard gives managers and executives with essential data to make informed decisions about specific business functions or projects. This dashboard usually includes data that is updated frequently but not in real-time. Examples of tactical dashboards include a sales dashboard, which displays sales performance by product, region, or salesperson, and a project management dashboard, which shows key metrics such as budget, timeline, and resource utilization.
Strategic Dashboard
A strategic dashboard provides top-level insights and trends to executives and decision-makers, helping them understand their business's overall health and direction. This dashboard usually includes updated data, such as monthly or quarterly figures. Examples of strategic dashboards include financial dashboards that show revenue, expenses, and profitability over time or marketing dashboards that display customer acquisition and retention metrics.
Analytical Dashboard
An analytical dashboard is a tool that offers a detailed analysis of data and enables users to focus on specific metrics or data sets. Data analysts or business intelligence professionals commonly use it to detect trends or patterns in data. For instance, a customer segmentation dashboard will highlight demographic and behavioral data for different customer groups. Alternatively, a social media analytics dashboard will reveal engagement and sentiment data for specific social media channels.
2. Make it goal-oriented
For example, if the legal team is focused on reducing legal spending, the dashboard could highlight areas where costs can be reduced or identify patterns that lead to higher legal costs.
The list bellow shows some common metrics that might inspire you. While these metrics can serve as a valuable benchmark for measuring success, it is essential to consider user feedback and prioritize the critical performance indicators that matter the most to them.
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IT Service Management (ITSM)
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Human Resources (HR)
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Finance
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Risk
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Legal
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3. Tell the proper stories with data visualizations
Visualizing data is crucial for creating effective dashboards but ensuring that the visuals can accurately tell the story you want to convey is vital. To achieve this, it is essential to clarify your goals and understand the purpose behind each data visualization.
When designing a dashboard for your data, it is crucial to prioritize the clarity, distribution, and color scheme of the presented information. Opting for a minimalistic design can help eliminate distractions and unnecessary repetition of data. Additionally, incorporating interactions and filters can further enhance the effectiveness of your data display, and including drill-down options can facilitate deeper analysis when required.
If you're unsure which data visualization type to use, consider these groups based on what you want to convey. This will help you make the right choice.
Here is a quick summary:
ComparisonComparison charts, such as bar charts, line charts, and scatterplots, are helpful when comparing one or more datasets. They can be used to compare items or show differences over time. These charts help identify patterns, trends, and relationships between variables. |
RelationshipRelationship charts, such as scatterplots and heat maps, show a connection or correlation between two or more variables. These charts are helpful when you want to identify patterns and relationships between variables. |
CompositionComposition charts, such as pie charts and stacked bar charts, display parts of a whole and changes over time. These charts are helpful when you want to show the relative proportions of distinct categories within a dataset.
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DistributionDistribution charts, such as histograms and box plots, show how variables are distributed over time, helping identify outliers and trends. These charts are helpful when you want to understand the distribution of a variable and identify any patterns or trends. |
Let us give you some practical examples:
Pie/Donut
Use a pie or donut chart to show the proportion or percentage of data in relation to the whole. For example, you can use a pie/donut chart to show the percentage of incidents by priority levels or the portion of the total IT budget spent on distinct categories such as hardware, software, and services.
Pro tips when using pie and donut charts:
- Use a donut chart with the total number in the center, instead of a pie chart, to show the proportion of each segment to the whole.
- If there are more than five segments, it is better to use a bar chart instead of displaying all of the segments in a donut or pie, which can confuse them. You can customize the chart to filter or limit the segments.
Vertical and horizontal bars
Use a vertical bar chart to compare values across distinct categories and a horizontal bar chart to show the rank or order of other items. For example, you can use a vertical bar chart to compare the number of incidents by category or to compare the performance of different teams in terms of SLA compliance. You can use a horizontal bar chart to show the top 10 incidents by priority or compare the performance of various departments regarding employee satisfaction.
Pro tips when using bar charts:
- Use horizontal bars when you want to convey a ranking message. They offer a more natural understanding order (bigger/higher to small/lower)
- Consider using stacked vertical bars. This combination provides much more context than a single column, depending on the insight you want to bring.
- Do not use more than 12 bars. They become hard to read and compare. You can limit the number of columns and combine all the rest in an "others" segment.
Single score
Use a single score chart to focus on a single metric or KPI (Key Performance Indicator) clearly and concisely. Single score charts help highlight the most important data points or provide a quick overall performance overview. For example, a single score chart can show the current SLA compliance rate, the number of open incidents, or the percentage of completed HR cases.
Pro tips using Single Score visualizations:
- You can use tables to show a current score and add an icon to convey the meaning of that score (i.e., an alert icon for the number of critical incidents)
- You can use KPIs as your data source to display more information in one chart, such as sparkline, target, and gap values, as well as representing the colors based on the direction of the score (i.e., green going in a positive direction and red going in a negative direction).
4. Organize the content
Finally, once you have determined the metrics, data, and visualizations to include in your dashboard, you must organize the content effectively. An essential consideration is ensuring that the dashboard is not cluttered and overwhelming but easy to read and interpret.
For instance, suppose you are displaying multiple charts on the same page. In that case, it's essential to consider their relevance, sizes, interactivity, and how viewers will interpret the relationship between two sets of data, descriptions, and other factors. You may group related charts or use interactive features such as filters to let users explore the data in more detail. By organizing the content thoughtfully, you can create an informative, easy-to-use dashboard, and effective in achieving your audience's goals.
Pro tips:
- Use filters for your common use and do not create multiple data viz representing the "same" date. For instance, consider using a filter for the Assignment group on your dashboard. When you filter the assignment group, you can have a focused view of that page showing multiple assignment group data.
- Consider not having a long page that requires a lot of scrolling. Instead, try to group the content in tabs giving them the context of their data.
- Remember the typical patterns of reading pages. The eyes will follow a Z or F sequence. Consider organizing your content by importance from left to right and top to bottom if your users use an occidental structure (left-to-right).
- Titles are your friend. Consider using them to group content, explain the meaning, and give more clarity. You may try to write the titles as the questions the chart answers, like What agents have more tickets open?
These processes will help you build and distribute a valuable and insightful dashboard. After all these tips, you should show your creation to some users and get their feedback to improve. You might do it before sharing it broadly but also sharing it and getting feedback. The important thing is to make sure you listen to the users in the beginning, use the best practices, and at the end, double-check if these two things match what users are looking for. And keep doing it.
I wish you success on your journey.
If you have questions or feedback to improve this article, please share.
You can find a extensive content about this topic in the post: Platform Analytics Academy - January 11th, 2023 - Which Visualization?
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