by Brendan Reed on April 24, 2018
Instead of scrolling through rows of data to glean insights, one well-crafted visual can make it easier to understand what’s going on, and help you make decisions more quickly. Charts can highlight outliers, trends, and other details you need to see to make the best choice for your business.
Our most recent additions to Smartsheet dashboards will help you supercharge your data visualization and give you more flexibility in your data sources, so you can get the information you need to make better-informed decisions more quickly. With our charts enhancements, you now have ten new chart variations at your fingertips for more ways to visualize your data in a dashboard. You also have the ability to create charts from reports. Add multiple data sources to one report, then create a chart from that report to bring multiple sources into one visual for a more complete picture. Not only that, but we’ve given you more flexibility on your sheet data structures for charts. Now you can select the specific columns you want to include in a chart, without needing to rearrange your sheet data to include what you want into your chart. Here’s how each of these enhancements work for you and your team to better visualize data:
by Brendan Reed on April 19, 2018
Are you wasting time looking for information? A recent infographic shows that information workers spend 36% of their day looking for and consolidating information, and 44% of the time they still can’t find the information they need.
Often, team information is provided manually via email or download, which in turn presents a new set of problems. Constant emailing and chats, the inability to control document versions, and more add up to a painful and ineffective experience. Centralized information and data sources are essential for managing and sharing team documents and data simply and effectively, but existing web-based platforms and company intranets have their limitations. For example, they typically need IT support to set up, which creates a lag time for business users. They can also be difficult to update, so information quickly becomes outdated as business users wait for IT to make changes.
by Stephen Branstetter on February 21, 2018
Earlier this month, we revealed Smartsheet dashboards, an unprecedented bird's-eye view into your business's work in Smartsheet. With dashboards, you have a customizable, powerful tool that arms you with real-time data and information for making the best decisions. Let’s look at some best practices for getting started with dashboards so you can improve your work right away.
Preparing Your Information for Dashboards
Before you start building a dashboard, there are three factors you must determine.
by Stephen Danos on April 9, 2018
Teams tend to stick together, whether they work for a Fortune 100 company or a 50-person startup. After all, these colleagues often work toward similar goals and team boundaries are sometimes needed to keep things streamlined for meeting deadlines, and for nurturing camaraderie between teammates.
However, the “silo mentality” holds teams back in several ways. Team silos can result in a sense of tribalism and undermine the spirit of collaboration, running the risk of disrupting a company’s ability to innovate and stay aligned. Here are some of the ways silos can hurt your business and what you and your teams can do to avoid them.
by Joosung Nam on February 13, 2018
Even when you and your teams use Smartsheet to manage and track your work, making sure that real-time information is accessible and actionable to all stakeholders can be challenging. The level of detail that an individual contributor needs in their sheet to get work done is at once too much and not enough data for the executive level. You need to make the right information available at the right time to the right people to help them make better decisions and quickly act on data.
That’s why we’re excited to announce Smartsheet’s new dashboards (previously known as Sights™) to go along with Smartsheet’s updated look and feel. In addition to all of the capabilities you have had with Sights up until today, we’ve added the ability to create charts based on your Smartsheet data to our dashboards. While you need a Business or Enterprise license to create and edit dashboards, anyone can access dashboards that are shared with them or published, whether or not they have a Smartsheet license.
by Stephen Danos on March 30, 2018
A culture of transparency, in which a company makes its strategic plans, playbooks, short-term and long-term goals, financial earnings, and important metrics available to all employees, increases visibility into department performance, promotes a healthier exchange of information, and can improve morale and engagement.
Transparent, thoughtful, and precise internal communications strategies provide employees with context for decision making at the executive level. This boosts internal enthusiasm, company pride, customer and product advocacy, and motivates internal teams to refine processes to make them more lean and scalable.
Cultivating a culture of transparency can be easier said than done, but the payoff is worth the investment. But, are you doing enough to promote internal transparency in your organization? Below are six ways to help you create a culture of transparency by providing employees with real-time visibility into relevant information.
by Katy Beloof on March 12, 2018
Is organizational complexity making it difficult for your teams to successfully accomplish projects on time and within budget? Multiple communication channels combined with cross-functional teamwork can cloud accountability and muddle decision-making authority, resulting in a lack of employee ownership in a project or process.
One solution to this lack of ownership and its effect on performance is “clear pressure”, a form of peer pressure based on the idea of giving employees real-time visibility into the progress of everyone’s work, so they can hold each other — and themselves — to a higher standard. But are the tools that provide visibility enough to create a culture of clear pressure? Or do leaders need to think more broadly about a solution?
by Katy Beloof on February 20, 2018
In order to stay competitive, business leaders must find new ways to make better decisions faster. A critical part of this is establishing visibility, or making sure the right people have access to the right information at the right time — in real time.
Businesses leaders need a way to free up employees to move swiftly and empower them with the information they need to execute. Leaders also need a way to see how day-to-day work is progressing, to keep their teams on track. At the same time, they need to ensure that high-level information is accurately and promptly communicated to the C-Suite, so they can more quickly make the critical decisions needed to move the business forward. With these challenges in mind, here’s a look at the three layers of visibility organizations need to make better decisions faster, execute more quickly on new initiatives, and ultimately thrive in today’s competitive market. |
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