Reports versus Dashboards – RG Help Center

Benefits of using both on the Reward Gateway platform

There are two main ways Reward Gateway can provide information to organizations: dashboards and reports. Understanding each and what they bring to the table can help you determine which one fits our client’s needs best. This is a general look at how reports and dashboards differ.

What are Reports?

Reports are static documents that contain data in text and table form.
They often include visuals such as basic graphs and charts, but are mostly organized to highlight specific raw numbers or relevant data sets.
The data they supply isn’t updated in real-time, and generally represents a slice of the available sets without the ability to manipulate them.
Reports can be extensive and complicated to create or manipulate.

What are Dashboards?

Dashboards are data visualization tools that can be customized and tailored to display specific metrics, data, and KPIs.
These tools are dynamic and live, so data is being updated in (near) real-time and visuals can show changes from minute to minute, as they are updated by the platform. (Update times vary depending on the source data/module.)
Dashboards have filters that allows users to drill-down data by changing parameters (date, dept, tenure, etc.)
Dashboards help show connections and relationships among different metrics, e.g.: between ecard activity and blog activity, or increased recognition and increased engagement scores.
Dashboards can be as narrow or broad as needed, letting organizations create multiple specific dashboards to better organize their analytics.

So, which do clients need? Dashboards or Reports?

The short answer is: both. Each can support different needs for our clients.

Reports tend to be broader and feature historic data. They represent a historic snapshot of a specific area or organization rather than its real-time situation.
Dashboards, on the other hand, are built to visualize and organize data in real-time. They can help alert managers when specific metrics change, or thresholds are met.
Dashboards also allow users to manipulate and interact with data dynamically, whereas reports show a static picture of the existing data.

Use Case for Reports: Planning and Budgeting

A client admin wants to plan and budget for the upcoming year.
They want to see reports on the following: the starting balance of each R&R program; the total transactions/awards sent from each program, and the ending balance for each R&R program.
They pull the R609 Transaction Summary report.

Use Case for Dashboards: Using Data to Drive Action

A client leader wants to help managers make recognition a consistent practice.
The client leader uses the Manager Dashboard to compare how often the managers on their team send ecards over the course of a few months.
They then posts a blog, segmented for managers, about the importance and impact of recognition.
They can track blog readership and compare it to a corresponding spike in ecard activity, so they knows their blog post has had an impact.

Overall, dashboards are optimal for everyday analytics, while reports are useful to capture static data. Furthermore, dashboards are ideal for compartmentalisation (e.g. department or location) and better for ongoing monitoring of specific metrics and functions.