Data isn’t just big - it’s everything. But it’s hard.
First, it was the Industrial Age. Then, the Machine Age, followed by the Atomic and Space Ages. Advents like email, WiFi, and the Like button ushered us into the Information Age and - for better or worse - the Social Age. Two centuries of industrial and digital transformation have landed us where we are today - squarely in the Big Data Age.
Enterprise organizations - 94% of them, in fact - realize that to thrive in this new age will require real time insight, with the ability to take real time actions. To get ahead, businesses must be ready with tomorrow’s (literally, tomorrow’s) data.
Organizations that have embraced self-service analytics tools agree that when their teams get serious about data, good things happen:
- Boosted efficiency & productivity
- Faster decision making
- Better financial performance
- Identification of new products & revenue streams
- Advantage over competition
“You’re preaching to the choir”, I hear you say, “I’ve been convinced. I made major investments into data tools.”
Alright. Noted. So then maybe you find yourself among the majority of organizations still struggling to realize the ROI of their analytics tools. The most common reasons why? Let’s have a look:
- Data security concerns
- Limited access to data across the organization
- Overcomplicated solutions
- Inconvenient & unintuitive data tools
- Lack of the proper technology
“Aham, now we’re talking,” you say.
“I can’t take the security risk of sharing my dashboards to a public URL.”
“My employees don’t open their emails.”
“We can only afford a few user seats.”
“Nobody is logging in and looking at the data every day.”
“Only the CEO and handful of department heads can access our data.”
While self-service analytics tools are the new black in business intelligence, organization-wide data adoption is still a huge problem plaguing orgs who struggle to make them more than decision making tools for the C-Suite and other organizational leadership. Data is often out of reach for most employees, leaving the massive benefits of these tools off the table for the majority of workforces.
So then, how do you change your approach to your bi software tools? How do you realize their potential as drivers of information-based employee engagement and internal efficiency?
The answer is in democratizing your bi dashboards. Getting them into the hands of your sales teams, your marketers, your customer success reps, your product managers, your logistics coordinators, your frontline retail workers.
When you consider that dashboards can give them insights into their role in the company’s success, in turn feeding back into their productivity and engagement, the ROI for deploying bi dashboards at scale across your organization can be potentially very high.
Let’s explore why this is harder than it sounds.
The challenges of securely sharing your BI dashboards
Despite the giant push in the last decade towards data-driven business, we have yet to meet a company that claims their dashboard tools aren’t bottlenecks for putting data insights into their employees’ hands. That’s for a few reasons:
BI dashboard software isn’t designed for easy general access
Data is as crucial - and as vulnerable to theft - as an organization’s cash. And so for good reason, dashboards tend to live behind logins and get locked off in departmental silos. User seats are limited, so typically only a handful of leaders can directly log in and access data, which comes with the extra administrative burden of sharing it out to your teams and staying on top of them to make sure they’re reading it. Which leads to the next point….
Just because you’re sharing your dashboards doesn’t mean people are reading them
Most tools allow you to send your dashboards out via email or Slack automations. In fact, that’s how the vast majority of businesses distribute their dashboards. But just because your dashboards have landed in your employees’ inboxes doesn’t mean they’ll read them. Employees are swamped with oversaturated communication channels, with 56% experiencing email overload and only 46% saying they’ll open & read an internal email. Yikes.
It makes you wonder how many people really read & digested your weekly report.
Even assuming they did, it doesn’t mean the data came to them when they needed it. Combing through an inbox or Slack thread for specific data is a huge waste of time and disruptive to real time decision making. Imagine how much more impact your data would have if it reached employees as they worked.
Public URLs aren’t secure
In addition to email and Slack distribution, most tools will allow you to spin up a public URL to your dashboards, which in and of itself is a risk. The security-minded organization isn’t going to be okay putting the keys to the castle out there on the web for anyone to find.
It’s worse for frontline & deskless workers
Over 80% of the global workforce is considered deskless. Working in industries like retail, healthcare, construction, manufacturing, and transportation, they are on the frontline of most businesses. Yet, companies are investing less than 1% of their software budget on them. Without a company email address or device, how do you get data into their hands for their daily work and interactions?
A new option to securely share BI dashboards: TV dashboards
Considering that the usual ways of publicly sharing data are too unreliable and insecure to pass muster for security-minded companies, it comes as great news that there’s a new option - one that easily scales while being extremely secure.
And at its core lies technology you’re extremely familiar with but probably haven’t considered as a channel for your internal comms: TV screens.
TVs exist all around us already, but are rarely put to use by businesses in any meaningful way. Consider the TV screen in your break room, or at your office reception - if it isn’t blank, it's probably playing muted cable news and going ignored.
But these boxes actually have enormous potential to revamp your internal communications because:
- As opposed to email, instant messages, and texts that usually only get acknowledged once and forgotten, screens can loop and amplify key messages for much more effective uptake and information recall
- TV screens can surface information in an ambient way that doesn’t disrupt workers
- TV screens are great venues for dynamic, attention grabbing content like 4K video, animations, QR codes, and more
- Because TV screens can be deployed to any physical environment, information can reach workers in the place and moment of their important daily work
Their impact can be even greater when you use TV screens in tandem with a smart content management system to target your messages to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.
Here’s how it works
- You download Fugo to your device and connect your screen(s) to our CMS
- You install a Chrome extension that will allow Fugo to record your steps as you log in to your preferred data tool and navigate to your dashboard
- You capture a snapshot of your dashboard
- Fugo stores this snapshot in a secure Cloud server and sends it to your screens to display
- Fugo updates the display every few seconds with a new snapshot, showing you real-time data
Here’s why it’s ultra-secure
A handful of digital signage softwares allow you to display a dashboard, albeit via a public URL which, as we’ve already discussed, won’t cut it for security savvy orgs. And worse, these same tools may integrate with a dashboard provider, but expose your login credentials on your device when accessing them, leaving your data wide open to hackers and any bad actor able to carry off your player.
Fugo’s secure TV dashboard product removes the issue of public URLs with a completely different approach; integrating with business intelligence tools like Tableau and Power BI, our tv dashboard software allows your dashboard to be displayed on a screen without creating a public URL or decrypting encrypted credentials from a shared login and storing them on a device.
To sum it all up:
- You do not have to create a public URL to share on screen
- Your login credentials are never exposed to your screen device
- Your credentials are encrypted & stored in a secure AWS server
- Your dashboard screenshots are created & deleted every few seconds
Bonus: Fugo is also more reliable than other solutions because as opposed to displaying dashboards on screens directly - which can quickly overload and crash media players - we display a dashboard snapshot which loads quickly and efficiently on any screen device, not just the professional grade ones.
Here’s what you can accomplish when you enlist TV dashboards to share your data
Reach employees at every level and location of your organization
Remember those frontline workers who were never able to access data because they weren’t connected to company communication channels like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or email?
With a TV screen in their working environment, you suddenly have an effective and direct line of communication with them - not just to share KPI’s and metrics, but to keep them in the loop with everything from trainings, shift management, corporate compliance, to employee recognition and events.
With a content tool like Fugo connected to your screens, you can curate your content at the HQ and local level. So teams in certain departments or locations can tailor and coordinate their own content in addition to complying with corporate messaging and guidelines.
Ensure your employees actually see & act on your data
It’s almost impossible to track the uptake of data across your teams with only email, URLs, and DMs. But with screens showing dashboards that continually update in real time, employees no longer need to seek out data - it comes to them, giving them invaluable insights they can act on here and now.
Free your data with zero licensing issues
Easily scale the number of teams and employees who can see your data without having to purchase more user licenses. With TV Dashboards from Fugo, usually just one account with read-only permissions is all you need to connect and distribute data to hundreds of screens.
Put any dashboard on screen
Need to streamline operations among your transportation fleet? Track your ad budget & performance in real-time? Motivate your sales or support teams by showing deals closed, revenue earned, ticket response time and/or customer satisfaction scores?
TV dashboards can go up anywhere from executive suites all the way to warehouse floors and back offices, closing gaps between the data haves & have-nots.
TV Dashboards are only part of the picture
Company TV brings your workforce together around what’s important
Your company is more than its targets & metrics. It’s made up of humans who thrive off connection and collaboration.
Having a secure screen sharing solution will inevitably open up your organization to new ways of thinking about how workplace screens can bring your entire workforce together around your culture - even those employees who don’t sit at desks or check their email.
With a powerful tool like Fugo, you have the flexibility to create and share content that can best motivate and meet the needs of your employees.
Along with business intelligence dashboards and KPI boards, you can consider a range of other content in various information categories:
- News: Company announcements, social media, national & global news, RSS feeds, stocks, weather, industry news, sports
- People: Praise, project management boards, OKRs, work anniversaries, birthdays, meet-the-team, benefits, polls, event reminders
- Functional: Way-finding, desk booking, room booking, directories, menus
Your screens can become canvases for your most creative thinking around the employee experience. Integrate Fugo with the business apps you know and love, get started with a content template, or create something entirely unique in our content design studio.
Our professional services team is also here to walk alongside organizations looking for guidance on how to maximize the ROI of their digital signage - helping you develop and deploy an intentional content strategy for your specific needs.
How to get started with TV dashboards
Fugo Dashboards is one of the most secure, scalable and affordable options in the industry when it comes to sharing your BI dashboards with your teams.
If you’d like to get started, you can go ahead and sign up for a Fugo account to create one dashboard during your free trial.
Alternatively, you can book a demo with our team. We’d love to show you how Fugo Dashboards might work inside your organization!
