When a year comes to an end, there’s always a tendency to look back at the days gone by to analyze what certain developments mean for a certain industry or sector. So, as the curtains are set to come down in 2020, we at Express Analytics, too, plan to bring you a roundup of all the prominent developments of the year in the world of data analytics. But that will be in another blog post.
Today, though, we will look at a prediction made by none other than well-known research firm Gartner in late October and the intense debate it generated in the data analytics industry.
In “The Top 10 Trends in Data and Analytics for 2020” report, Gartner laid out the top technology trends that data and analytics leaders need to focus on as they look to make essential investments to prepare for a reset. In it, it has virtually forecast the end of “pre-defined analytics dashboards”, to be replaced with “dynamic data stories”.
Said the report: Dynamic data stories with more automated and consumerized experiences will replace visual, point-and-click authoring and exploration. As a result, the number of time users spends using predefined analytics dashboards will decline. The shift to in-context data stories means that the most relevant insights will stream to each user based on their context, role, or use.
The Gartner team added that such dynamic insights would leverage technologies such as augmented analytics, NLP, streaming anomaly detection, and collaboration.
The report was followed up with a series of articles on Medium and on other blogs, much in the same vein – “Analytics Dashboards are dying”. Not that this lot was saying something entirely new. For some time now, there have been similar predictions, on and off, claiming pre-defined analytics dashboards were “just not up to the mark”, and their end was near. Ranged against such naysayers are those who continue to insist (a) analytics dashboards are here to stay (b) dashboards do not really have a suitable replacement for now (c) notebooks are the best alternates for dashboards (for now, at least).
When they first came into play, data analytics dashboards represented a leap forward from the staid (and cumbersome) spreadsheet. Suddenly, visualizing and reporting complex data using interactive and, dare we say, colorful dashboards was so much better than the average, one-dimension spreadsheet.
So Why The Problem With Analytics Dashboards Now?
The way we see it here at Express Analytics, the foremost problem with analytics dashboards is context, or rather, the lack of it. The other is that “one dashboard does not fit all.” Let us not forget that with the increase in data democracy, dashboards today are used by two distinct categories of users – the data scientists/analysts, and then the “non-technical” users like the Sales and Marketing teams.
But context is the paramount reason for the negative outlook on analytics dashboards today. Often, perspective is missing when dashboards are designed. Without it, a dashboard’s as good or as bad as your spreadsheet. Here’s an example: If you have a dashboard that visualizes the number of clicks and likes got on your company’s social media channels, you need to put it in perspective in the same dashboard. That perspective could be: how are the numbers in comparison to the previous month’s, or the same time last year, or how are they in comparison to your rival’s?
A poorly designed analytics dashboard seems to be the main reason for detractors predicting its death. Ease of use maybe the other.
Original Source: https://expressanalytics.com/blog/analytics-dashboards/
