Would you rather look at a spreadsheet that has hundreds of rows of raw data? Or a simple and intuitive chart that pulls out and summarizes the key insights? For most people, the answer is a no-brainer: They’ll take the chart over the eye-glazing spreadsheet any day. That’s the power of data visualization.

At Craft.io, our mission has always been to give product teams and leaders the tools they need to make the best-informed decisions for their products’ success. And as a product professional yourself, you know that one of the most valuable tools available to any product team is visibility. That’s why, for example, we created Craft.io’s capacity planning and product portfolio management tools.

In our post announcing the Craft.io progress dashboard, we pointed out that this new tool makes it easy for product managers to visually analyze their progress on virtually any product-related metrics and categories: quarters, sprints, products, teams, objectives, etc. Users can also filter this data in any way they choose for even deeper insights – for example, to review how consistently a specific team has completed its tasks on time over several quarters.

Any Sales Director worth their salt knows you need to be on top of your numbers. And if you want your sales team to be successful, you need them to be on top of their numbers too. For many, the single best way of achieving this is with a sales dashboard. A sales dashboard gives you and your team a single view of your most important metrics – so you can access them at a glance.

Remote workforce management is driving the business landscape, requiring cloud-based tools for monitoring to maintain productivity and user satisfaction. Real-User Monitoring (RUM) and synthetic transaction monitoring are powerful tools that enable organizations to diagnose and fix network issues faster for their employees wherever they work.

If you work in a fast-paced business, it’s not hard to see why real-time analytics might be valuable. Being able to analyze live (or near-live) data can help you and your team react faster, and make more informed decisions in the moment. Setting up analytics and reporting systems always has the potential to cause a headache – this is especially true when it comes to working with real-time data.

Even though it’s sometimes seen as an enterprise-level business challenge, operational efficiency is a critical focus area for small to medium businesses (SMBs). Operational efficiency is about your business’s ability to deliver its products or services in an optimized and cost-effective way, minimizing waste and maximizing productivity. As a small business owner navigating growth, one of your biggest priorities has to be achieving operational efficiency.

For many, Excel spreadsheets are a no-nonsense way to keep track of your business KPIs. Whether you want to track company revenue, sales team performance or key marketing indicators, Excel is the go-to tool for many business leaders who want a simple way of monitoring the metrics that matter. However, you may have noticed that Excel is not the most effective way of getting your team to take notice of your KPIs.

Victor Figueroa, Farmers Insurance Agency Owner, was building out a sales call center when he realized his old whiteboard wasn’t quite up to the task. He tells us how switching to a real-time TV dashboard has ignited a competitive fire in his sales team. At the end of summer 2023, Victor had the chance to scale up his office space. He wanted to take this opportunity to expand not only the floor plan of his new office but also the way his team worked.