Reference entries (28)
- reference Caveats for the dashboards brief: pervasive BI/embedded-analytics vendor sourcing; the viral "60-70%" stat is folklore; SMB data thin; retention claims unproven
- reference Dashboard rot: data sources change schemas, metric definitions drift across departments, organizational attention wanes; custom/embedded builds carry the heaviest ~20-30%/yr maintenance burden
- reference The "what would I do if this number doubled or halved tomorrow?" test — if no action follows, it's vanity
- reference Five criteria separating a used dashboard from a vanity one: built for daily user / every metric tied to decision+threshold / embedded in existing workflow / trusted / few metrics (~5-7 per view)
- reference Custom-embedded 3-year TCO converges on $300K-$630K (multiple, mostly vendor sources) with 20-30% annual maintenance; hidden costs are multi-tenancy/RLS, performance at scale, perpetual maintenance
- reference Embedded-analytics platforms (2026): Luzmo $995-3,100/mo embedded plans; Explo $795/Growth, $2,195/Pro; Cube Core open-source + Cube Cloud consumption; Embeddable still in beta
- reference Metabase pricing (2026): Open Source free (AGPL v3 self-host); Cloud Starter $100/mo (5 users included, +$6/user); Pro $575/mo (10 users, +$12/user; white-label + embedded + RLS + SSO); Enterprise from ~$20K/yr
- reference Tableau pricing (2026): Cloud Standard Viewer $15 / Explorer $42 / Creator $75 per user/mo (annual); Enterprise $35/$70/$115; embedded/OEM year-1 floor reportedly $60K-150K
- reference Looker Studio: free tier widely used; Looker Studio Pro $9/user/Google-Cloud-PROJECT/month (per-project detail materially inflates agency costs); separate Looker (Google Cloud core) $35K-60K+/yr
- reference Power BI pricing (April 2025): Pro $14/user/mo, Premium Per User $24/user/mo (both raised from $10/$20); Fabric F2 ~$262/mo to F64 ~$5,000/mo (viewers no per-user); Embedded A1 ~$735/mo
- reference Customer-facing embedded dashboard earns its keep in a NARROW BAND: recurring clients + frequently-updating data-rich results + retention/differentiation lever + support deflection
- reference AgencyAnalytics benchmark — a majority of agencies still send static reports to clients while relying on live dashboards internally; live unfinal numbers invite client misinterpretation
- reference Customer-facing dashboard use cases (real examples): agencies (client results), in-product analytics (Shopify, Strava, Zendesk), logistics tracking portals (FourKites, Shippeo, project44)
- reference Cross-industry internal dashboards round-up: e-commerce (conversion, inventory turns, CAC), healthcare (occupancy, readmissions), logistics (on-time, exceptions), SaaS (activation, churn, NRR), hospitality (occupancy, no-shows)
- reference Manufacturing internal dashboards: OEE, MTBF/MTTR, PM compliance, planned-vs-reactive ratio (world-class target ~80/20)
- reference Professional services: DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) dashboards with aging buckets + at-risk-customer flags; 30-45 days is a common "good" benchmark; rising DSO is an early cash-flow warning
- reference Construction: weekly job-cost dashboards (labor variance, committed vs actual materials, change orders, billing vs % complete, backlog) catch margin erosion before month-end financials arrive
- reference "Only 45% of people with access to BI tools actually use them" — traces to Logi Analytics (BI vendor) report, not independent research
- reference "72% of users regularly abandon dashboards for spreadsheets" — Luzmo vendor-run *State of Dashboards 2025* survey of ~200 SaaS/product leaders; "Dashboards: Dead, Dying or Evolving?"
- reference CORRECTION: the viral "60-70% (or 60-80%) of dashboards go unused (Gartner)" stat cannot be traced to any named Gartner report — vendor folklore
- reference Software Advice (online survey of 243 US business owners/managers) — 5% of SMBs report using a BI dashboard to analyze data; Excel/Google Sheets dominate at 65%
- reference Gartner — "pervasive business intelligence remains elusive, with BI and analytics adoption at about 30% of all employees" (doc 3753469, Howson & Sallam)
- reference BARC / Eckerson Group (March 2022, 214 D&A leaders surveyed Nov-Dec 2021) — BI/analytics adoption at 25% of employees on average; "stuck around 20% for many years" per Eckerson
- reference Refresh cadence: real-time matters for operational exception use (logistics ETAs, manufacturing downtime); daily suits most SMB KPIs; refresh frequency drives cost (Power BI Pro 8/day vs Premium Per User 48/day)
- reference Dashboards sit on top of a capture layer (DB / warehouse / SaaS APIs / spreadsheets); data quality below the surface determines trust — abandonment frequently stems from numbers that don't reconcile, not from the visualization
- reference Internal operational vs customer-facing dashboards — different metrics, different success criteria, different audiences
- reference Dashboard vs static report: dashboard is live + queryable + interactive; report is a point-in-time snapshot for documentation / compliance / shared "version of truth"
- reference Research brief: dashboards for SMBs — what's worth showing, and when an embedded one earns its keep (June 2026)
