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They say that time is money, but in today’s world, saying that data is money is equally correct. You can make better business decisions and increase profitability with the right data. One of the top ways to do that is by using BI reporting.
The world of BI is notorious for being overly complex for the average business user. But today, we’re going to show you how anyone can use BI reporting to make smarter business decisions, as well as how you can create a simple BI reporting dashboard.
Business intelligence reporting collects, analyzes, and visualizes data to help key stakeholders make more data-driven business decisions. BI reporting involves multiple tools that help go from raw data to valuable business insights.
The typical BI reporting involves:
BI reporting provides several core benefits, but four of them stand out:
Thanks to self-service BI tools, non-technical employees can explore and manipulate data. Tools like Luzmo allow users to create visualizations through simple drag-and-drop functions, making it easier for employees to extract insights without needing deep data science skills.
BI reporting empowers decision-makers—from individual contributors to executives—to base decisions on data, not gut feelings. By looking at historical data, businesses can uncover trends and predict future outcomes, significantly reducing risk and improving accuracy.
One of the standout advantages of modern BI software is the ability to automate repetitive tasks in the reporting process, such as data preparation and report generation.
This frees up time for data analysts to focus on more complex tasks, improving operational efficiency. Automation tools in BI platforms reduce the time it takes to collect and analyze data, helping organizations stay agile in decision-making.
As businesses grow, their data needs change. BI platforms offer scalability to accommodate increasing data volumes and evolving business requirements.
BI software can adapt to your needs, whether dealing with a few datasets or integrating data from various sources.
With features like machine learning and advanced data integration, businesses can manage larger datasets, maintain customizable workflows, and adjust reporting to meet future goals without overhauling their entire system.
BI reporting is an umbrella term that covers different ways of visualizing and analyzing data. These are the most common types of BI reporting tools and activities.
These are data analysis tools in which users can drag and drop elements to get the output they need. They can change date ranges, types of graphs and tables, pick and choose table elements, and more.
These are dashboards with a specific purpose in mind. They typically have a pre-defined number of KPIs based on the topic. For example, a financial KPI reporting dashboard for a SaaS app will have churn rates, MRR, ARR, CAGR, CAC:LTV, and other metrics.
These are dashboards embedded in SaaS products. For example, an e-commerce platform with dashboard functionality allows store owners to manage their inventory and track key sales metrics in one place.
Dashboards and reports that consider historical data and use it to make forecasts for future periods.
Dashboards and BI tools for monitoring crucial metrics from processes happening in real-time. Examples include error logging, building or energy waste monitoring, and monitoring production lines or manufacturing machines.
Ad-hoc BI reporting refers to creating on-demand, customized reports that cater to specific, often one-time needs.
Unlike pre-scheduled reports, ad-hoc reports are generated as needed, allowing users to explore data without predefined templates. This type of reporting allows data analysts and business users to pull information from various sources, analyze specific key performance indicators, and create reports tailored to immediate queries.
For example, a marketing team might need a quick report on campaign performance metrics for an upcoming meeting. With ad-hoc BI reporting, they can instantly generate customizable visualizations based on current data without waiting for regularly scheduled reports. Many BI platforms offer ad-hoc capabilities that streamline the process, integrating data from multiple systems and enabling real-time analysis.
If you’ve decided to say goodbye to spreadsheets and embrace the future of data analytics and visualization, we have some great news. With Luzmo, anyone without data science skills can create a BI reporting dashboard.
And with a decent developer, you can embed them in any web environment and share data insights with product users quickly. Let’s walk you through an example of how to create one so you, too, can make more informed decisions about your business.
We’re going to show you all the steps to create a sales pipeline dashboard that looks like this:
The first question to answer is: Who are the business users and decision-makers who will be viewing this dashboard? This determines the type and granularity of data you show and the order in which it is presented.
In our case, the audience is sales managers.
Second, determine the dashboard's goal. What should the person reading achieve once they are faced with this data?
For this example, the sales manager will monitor sales performance so they can better forecast business performance for their company.
Lastly, determine the key metrics that help you achieve those goals for that target audience. In this case, the metrics will be deal value, number of deals, close rate, performance per employee, and value per funnel stage.
BI reporting tools can automate many things, but they still need to know where the data for your dashboards comes from. Typically, user-friendly BI tools let you directly connect with your most important data sources in a few clicks.
The first part is to identify your data sources. For our sales pipeline dashboard, we’ll use HubSpot as our CRM tool of choice.
Whatever data source you use, the data you get is usually not ready for business needs such as analysis and visualization. In that case, you can use ETL, or data modeling tools like Fivetran or DBT to structure your data in the right format.
In our specific example, apps such as Fivetran extract data from Hubspot and create data tables that business intelligence reporting tools can use immediately.
Typically, these tools extract data and don’t store it, which you can do in an online data warehouse such as BigQuery, PostgreSQL, or Snowflake.
With this technical step out of the way, you can move on to more fun tasks.
Depending on your BI tool, this step can be more or less complicated. Enterprise-level tools such as Microsoft’s PowerBI or Tableau are more complex. With Luzmo, this step is a piece of cake.
With Luzmo, you can connect to:
All major databases and data warehouses are covered.
To add a new dataset in Luzmo, simply go to Datasets in the left-hand side of your dashboard and choose your data source. You’ll then see the credentials modal, where you can fill in the necessary values for a PostgreSQL database. For more details, this video is a good starting point.
Visualization means turning data points into graphics that stakeholders can understand. We offer a large selection of visualization types in Luzmo, so choose the one that best suits your needs and drop it onto the canvas.
We will build a common visualization called a stacked bar chart for our sales dashboard.
At this point, you should drag and drop the data you want to visualize onto the chart.
You can now continue the same process for each metric or chart you’d like to visualize in Luzmo.
You probably won’t get everything right on your first try, but don’t worry. Good BI tools let you change things on the go and edit and adjust dashboards according to the needs of your end-users.
If you don’t know where to start, our guide on dashboard design is a great way to learn the basics of dashboard optimization.
Pro tip: if you want to save time, using Luzmo’s templates can give you inspiration and food for thought about what metrics (not) to include.
Your dashboard is done and you’re ready to show everyone in your team what a major step-up from Excel you’ve made. In Luzmo, you can share your dashboard within your organization in just a few clicks:
But if you have more than your internal team in mind, there are other ways of sharing. In Luzmo, you can embed dashboards into websites, portals or SaaS applications. This facilitates easy sharing with customers. For more info on embedding dashboards, this is a good read.
Of course, you don’t want to remind everyone to check your dashboard masterpiece all the time. In Luzmo, set up automated email reports to key stakeholders at your desired intervals.
And just like that, you created a BI reporting machine that helps key stakeholders make better business decisions.
BI reporting is not a buzzword - it empowers non-tech-savvy users to make more data-driven decisions. You no longer need large teams of data scientists, analysts, and data management experts to create a simple but powerful BI dashboard.
With Luzmo, creating dashboards and interactive reports is a walk in the park. Our modern BI tool fits many use cases, from embedding dashboards in a SaaS app, website, or web application.
With our intuitive interface, it will take you mere days to create an embedded dashboard - not weeks or months. BI reporting combined with data visualization capabilities will offer you more actionable insights and summaries so you can make better decisions for your strategy.
Create your first BI report in Luzmo today - completely free.
Experience the power of Luzmo. Talk to our product experts for a guided demo or get your hands dirty with a free 10-day trial.
