Business intelligence (BI) dashboards, also known as BI dashboards, are a powerful way to help people collect, share and analyze their business data to make informed decisions. Dashboards can help users monitor operations, optimize processes, and improve overall business performance by having data readily available, and can also help detect and prevent potential problems before they become issues with its use of real time data.

Dashboards and reports are two common terms used interchangeably in discussion around business intelligence (BI) and data analytics platforms. Both are analysis tools used to present operational information graphically, provide visibility into organizational performance, and enable informed decision-making based on hard tracked metrics. But what is the actual difference between BI dashboards vs a report?

Enterprise organizations with complex datasets, need to find ways to make their data more accessible and usable. One way to do this is through data visualization, which can help provide reporting that makes data more understandable and actionable. While the bare minimum requirement for data visualization BI software is good data visualization capability, there are more specific features that are often needed.

Data visualization is synonymous with business intelligence. Like dashboards, it’s a core capability of analytics solutions, and it’s important to know its role in the BI process today. Data visualization is the practice of representing information graphically to communicate and contextualize data. It highlights important changes, patterns and trends using a visual format, such as charts, graphs, maps and plots, to help make data easier to understand.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in November 2010, and has been updated in 2022 for comprehensiveness, with 6 additional key BI features added. Different organizations will invest in a business intelligence (BI) solution for different reasons, depending on their specific circumstances and industry.

The business intelligence dashboard, or BI dashboard, is a paradigm that’s well over 30 years old, and for many, it hasn’t evolved fast enough to address a fundamental limitation. Context. On its own, dashboards are a handy visualized report of key data pertaining to business performance, designed as a way to quickly consume important data at-a-glance.

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Business data is continuously growing in complexity and quantity. With so many variables, it’s impossible to scan every dashboard or report with a fine-eye, or track every trend. To get the most insights out of your dashboards and reporting today requires a two-prong approach of both manual analysis and automated analysis - the latter of which requires the integration and use of what is called augmented analytics.