Why this matters
Managers check the same few numbers every week: sales, stock, attendance, households reached. Instead of sending a new report each time, an analyst can build a dashboard that updates from the data automatically. Dashboards and business intelligence (BI) tools such as Power BI, Tableau and Looker Studio appear in many analyst and M&E adverts, especially at banks, telcos and larger NGOs.
What a dashboard is
A dashboard is a single page that shows key numbers and charts, connected to a data source so it refreshes when the data changes. A good one answers the regular questions of one audience without them needing to ask you.
Free tools you can use
- Looker Studio is a free Google tool that runs in the browser. It connects easily to Google Sheets, so a sheet you already maintain can feed a dashboard. It works on a low spec laptop and you can view dashboards on a phone.
- Power BI Desktop is free from Microsoft but runs only on Windows. Power BI is named in several Ghanaian analyst and M&E adverts, so it is worth learning if you have access to a reasonably recent Windows laptop. Sharing dashboards with other people generally needs a paid licence, so practise on your own computer.
- Tableau Public is a free version of Tableau. Everything you save to it is public, so use only public or invented data.
The ideas transfer between tools, so start with whichever you can run.