How Can Analysts Make Their Dashboards and Analysis Presentations Actionable?

In analytics presentations and dashboards, it is important for the analyst to make it clear what next steps should be taken as a result of their data and insights. If an analyst is not doing this well, it may be worth inviting them to a data presentation training that will teach them various ways of doing this. For each visual or slide created, an analyst should take a step back and ask themselves “what might someone do differently based on the data shown in this view?”. If the question can’t be answered, in the best case scenario, this is simply “nice-to-know” data and not “need-to-know” data. The analyst should also ponder what the main business objective was for the dashboard or analysis and whether the current version achieves that objective in a robust and easy-to-follow manner. There could also be an opportunity to set up some kind of mentorship between analysts who tend to present data well and analysts who tend to struggle in this area.