Conventionally, sales has been an intuition-driven profession. Garnering sales leads included researching target markets, engaging with prospects and discussing their goals and objectives and eventually, turning a potential client into a customer. However, the continual advancement of technology has enabled data-driven sales operations to become the norm. Sales teams across organizations no longer have to rely solely on instincts but instead can leverage data to make well informed business decisions.
Proper utilization of data and data analysis have become the pillar that ultimately defines a sales team’s overall success. The availability of data allows for improved decision-making, boosted performance, alignment with the current market trends and the ability to better understand potential prospects and customers better. However, the power of data lies in its representation and comprehensibility. Sales data needs to be aggregated from multiple sources and represented in a way that is easy to understand and analyze. Sales dashboards are utilized as tools that help the sales team leverage the most viable data while also staying ahead of the competition.
What Is a Sales Dashboard?
A sales dashboard is a compelling visual representation of the most pertinent KPIs on a single screen. It delivers a real-time view of critical metrics, i.e., monthly targets, sales revenue, profit margins, conversion rates, customer satisfaction ratings or client retention figures. Well-designed sales dashboards help the stakeholders identify what is working as well as the issues and actions items that require immediate attention. Based on the presented data, organizations can better understand the health of their business and strategize for the future accordingly.
What are the Types of Sales Dashboards in SharePoint?
While sales dashboards are crucial for the inherent success of a sales operation, usage varies from organization to organization. In some entities, it might be used to define future market strategies, whereas in others it keeps businesses updated on the progress of the sales department as a whole. Based on the display metrics, dashboards can be broken down into four different categories.
Informational: To review surface-level information, sales teams create informative dashboards that showcase the most critical information at a glance.
- Analytical: Voluminous data that is stored on the enterprise systems is analyzed and based on the findings from historical data, business-critical insights are displayed to the users.
- Operational: Details regarding the administrative and operational processes are displayed using operational dashboards in SharePoint. They help organizations understand and evaluate performance in real-time.
- Strategic: Utilized to drive tactics and create sales forecasts, a strategic dashboard intends to improve the overall functionality of the sales teams. It empowers C-level executives and managers to effectively control sales KPIs and monitor them in a centralized location.
What Are the Benefits Offered by SharePoint Dashboards?
A SharePoint dashboard is a related group of interactive scorecards and reports that are organized together within the SharePoint site. Compelling dashboards enable sales teams to strategize and implement better transactional tactics. Some qualitative business benefits of these dashboards are:
Access data from a centralized location: The presence of unstructured data is of no use for any organization. Information stored in siloes is an impediment for easy discoverability and analysis of data. SharePoint dashboards ensure that all the data is present in a centralized location and is easily accessible by the team whenever required.
Sales calendar synching: Sales professionals can use integrated calendars in their dashboards to keep up with their sales meetings and deadlines.
Real-time updates: Data is the catalyst that helps drive businesses forward. With the use of SharePoint-based sales dashboards, teams are notified in real-time as new data is available that can help generate new leads.
Sales performance analysis: An impactful sales dashboard showcases performance. It helps in monitoring the project progress, measuring schedule variance, enabling the sales team to get their act together and completing projects on time.
Increase accountability and transparency: A dashboard shows the most accurate information on the screen. It depicts the performance of every individual in real-time. Therefore, ensuring complete transparency regarding the project status and the status of employees’ productivity working on a particular project.
Boost decision-making abilities: An impactful dashboard displays crucial data in a meaningful way that both managers and stakeholders can utilize in order to predict market demands and improve decision-making.
Seamless customization: Another significant advantage of the SharePoint-based sales dashboard is that teams can customize it according to their business requirements. Organizations can leverage no-code SharePoint solutions to aggregate, filter and display data on the dashboard based on their specific requirements at any point in time.
Organizations looking to take their sales strategy to the next level should consider investing in tools that include pre-built, easy to use templates. By building impactful dashboards, the sales team can increase efficiency and improve sales.
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