Why No Dashboards?

Because we can’t do everything well and we shouldn’t try. Seriously. We are a learning technology company that has mastered user experience and personalization. We are not a data visualization company. Our clients use tools like Tableau and Roambi for visualization and combine learning data with information from other tools to gain deeper insight across their organizations.

When we surveyed our clients about dashboards, the vast majority told us that what they really needed was easy access to all of the data captured by the Intellum Platform. They wanted us to provide a “best-in-class” reporting engine that allowed them to dig into specific learning activities or drill down to the performance and consumption data of the individual user. Dashboarding and visualization are important, but our clients have tools and, in most cases, dedicated teams for this kind of work.

We recognize that our competitors have built some basic dashboarding functionality into their admin views. But after talking to companies that use our competitors’ tools, new clients coming to us from these competitors and industry analysts who cover these companies, we have determined that narrowly-focused, static dashboards with limited customization options quickly prove ineffective for the client. It appears that dashboards in learning solutions are largely an empty sales tactic.

We have a better idea.

How We Help With Visualization

It’s not really about the data visualization, per se. It’s about the quality of the data being visualized. Severe reporting limitations are one of the learning industry’s “dirty little secrets.” We’ve worked very hard over the last twenty years to provide what we believe is the best reporting approach in the space - and we love to help our clients identify and track the data that moves the needle. While most of our clients do push this data from our reporting engine into a broader BI tool or data visualization solution, some teams just need us to help with dashboarding - and we’re happy to assist. We’re not going to fake it in the tool like other providers, but once we have determined with the client which metrics and KPIs are critical, we will build (and then turn over) custom dashboards using powerful free tools like Google Data Studio.

The advantage is that we can isolate the data that really matters to the client and then create a custom view that helps the client understand and communicate the success of their unique initiatives. Once developed, the client is empowered to add to, or alter, the dashboard as the initiatives evolve. We’re there to help, of course. And perhaps the most compelling win - a dashboard built in a tool like Google Data studio is easily shareable across the entire organization.

So while we purposefully don’t offer dashboards inside the Intellum Platform - What we do offer is a powerful, modern, customizable data visualization solution, and it’s free.