Having a dashboard built pays off once your numbers matter enough to make decisions on, but are still tracked by hand in Excel. There are three routes: a BI tool such as Power BI or Looker Studio on top of your existing data, a custom dashboard built as a web application, or a dashboard inside the system that already runs your process. This article explains when each route fits, how to decide what belongs on your dashboard and what it costs.

The short version

  • Start from the decision, not the chart. A good dashboard shows the three to five numbers someone actually acts on.
  • A BI tool is often enough when a few people want to analyse data that already lives in sources it can connect to.
  • A custom dashboard fits when it must drive action, is used by many people or customers, needs to be real-time or combines data a BI tool struggles to reach.
  • Let a dashboard alert you, so nobody has to stare at it all day.

Signs you've outgrown Excel

Excel is a fine place to start. But at some point keeping it up costs more time than it returns. You'll recognise these signs:

  • Someone copies data by hand every week from your webshop, accounts or planning into a spreadsheet.
  • Several versions are flying around. "Report_final_v3", and nobody knows which numbers are right.
  • The numbers are always a week old. By the time you see them, the moment to act has passed.
  • Only one person understands the file. When that person is ill or on holiday, there's no overview.
  • You want to share numbers with customers or partners, but emailing a spreadsheet feels unprofessional and is hard to secure.

Route 1: a BI tool on top of your existing data

BI tools such as Power BI and Looker Studio are built to analyse and visualise data from different sources. They're powerful, maintained by the vendor and come with connectors for many common packages.

A BI tool fits well when:

  • a small number of people analyse the numbers, such as management or finance;
  • your data already lives in sources the tool has a ready-made connector for;
  • it's about looking back and analysing, not stepping into a running process;
  • someone on your team has the time and appetite to build and maintain reports.

Be honest about the limits. With many users the per-user licences add up, data from your own systems or databases without a standard connector is hard to bring in, and a BI report is mainly something to look at: approving, assigning or calling a customer happens somewhere else.

Route 2: a custom dashboard as a web application

A custom dashboard is a web application of its own, built around your process. It fits when:

  • it must drive action, not just report. You want to approve an order, assign a ride or follow up a customer in the same screen.
  • many people use it, such as a whole team, or customers and partners who see their own data.
  • the numbers must be real-time, because you adjust during the day rather than afterwards.
  • data comes from systems a BI tool struggles to reach, such as your own software, a marketplace or an external API.
  • different users may see different things, with permissions that match your organisation exactly.

The downside: you have something built rather than signing up for a licence, and you need a partner for maintenance. When custom software pays off over a standard package in general is covered in Custom software or off-the-shelf: when does it pay off?.

Route 3: the dashboard in your existing system

Sometimes the best dashboard already exists. Many webshop platforms, accounting packages and CRMs have built-in overviews. Look at those carefully before having anything new built. And if you're having software built for your process anyway, such as a booking or ordering system, include the dashboard in that software from the start. Then the numbers sit exactly where the work happens.

Examples from our projects

  • Tapp: festivals manage drinks, orders and data more efficiently and see in real time what's happening at the event. Organisers get usable insight into their event data, while the platform handles large numbers of transactions.
  • DenHaagTax: bookings, dispatching rides and payments live in one system. Since launch DenHaagTax has seen more bookings and lower operational costs.
  • MyBeauty247: all orders from the webshop and several marketplaces come together in one central overview, which makes order management easier.
  • Haagse Taxi: rates and bookings for two taxi brands live in one place.

In each case the overview sits inside the software that does the work. That's route 3, but custom-built.

How to start

Before you pick a tool or have something built, answer these five questions:

  1. Which three to five numbers lead to a decision? Not "everything we have", but the numbers someone acts on. Revenue per day, open orders, rides without a driver.
  2. Who looks at it, and how often? A director looking back monthly needs something different from a planner adjusting every hour.
  3. Where does the data come from, and how fresh must it be? Yesterday's overview is sometimes enough; on a busy festival day it isn't.
  4. Who may see what? Staff, managers, customers and partners often each need their own slice of the numbers.
  5. Is it used on the go? Then the dashboard must read well on a phone too.

Tip: next to every number, write down the decision it belongs to. If you can't think of one, the number doesn't belong on your dashboard, however interesting it is.

Three design rules for a dashboard people actually use

  • One screen, one question. "How are we doing today?" and "where is our margin leaking?" are two screens, not one overcrowded one.
  • Show trend and context. "42 orders" says little; "42 orders, 15% more than last week" says a lot. Compare with a target or a previous period.
  • Alert instead of making people stare. Have the dashboard send a notification when a number crosses a threshold, so nobody has to watch a screen all day.

Building a dashboard for a new product? The same rules apply. Test your business idea with a web app covers which numbers you'll want to see then.

What does a dashboard cost?

The costs are structured differently per route:

  • BI tool: licences per user, plus the time to set up and maintain connectors and reports. Cheap to start with, but costs grow with the number of users.
  • Custom dashboard: a one-off investment in the build, plus hosting and maintenance. With us, a dashboard built as a web application falls in the same price ranges as other web applications: a first version from €3,000 to €5,000, with accounts and an admin panel around €5,000 to €8,000, and with several roles or integrations around €10,000 to €15,000.
  • Built-in dashboard: often already part of your subscription, or part of the software you're having built.

After a free intake you get one fixed price and a delivery date, usually within 4 to 8 weeks.

How we work

We build web applications from internal dashboards to client portals, and connect them to the systems you already use, from CRM to accounting software. You see a working version every week, and once paid the code is yours. After launch you can come to us for maintenance. Wondering which route fits you? See how our process works or plan a free intake.