How many people have opened your email? How many sales did your team bring in? And most importantly, how much time do you spend creating spreadsheets and getting buried in reports? Wouldn’t it be easier if there was a way to display your data so that you know exactly what’s going on in your business at all times?

What is a dashboard?

The go-to solution you are looking for is dashboards. A tool that cuts through data clutter and helps you get down to what really matters. But more concretely, what is a dashboard?

Founder of Perceptual Edge, Stephen Few describes dashboards as a visual display of your business’ data that is essential to achieve your goals. This data is consolidated and showcased on a single screen so that it can be tracked and monitored at a glance. Truly helpful is the fact that the data is automatically updating itself without any assistance from the user. With the right dashboard, you can experience the satisfaction of leading your business to success.

I know what you’re thinking: so, how do I spot the right dashboard?

As the Partnerships Manager at Airtame, I’ve spent months researching dashboards that work with Airtame.

Provided that these dashboards have a shareable public link, you can copy-paste it into your Airtame’s settings, and your dashboard will display on the screen. Once your dashboard is up on a large screen, it becomes a wallboard, a term you might have heard before but never really knew what it was. The main benefit of wallboards is that they are highly visible and easy to understand for everyone around them.

Here I found not one but 27 dashboard services, that will easily help you showcase your company’s indispensable data on any office screen. To make your life easier, I’ve split them into Executive Dashboards and Social Walls, according to their focus.

Executive Dashboards

If what you’re looking for is the classic KPI dashboard that helps you keep track of your business performance, then Executive Dashboards are for you. This includes your accounting software data, your CRM, website analytics, or email system data for a broader perspective. Here are some recommendations:

Klipfolio

Used by more than 11,000 companies, and integrating data from Dropbox, Marketo, Moz, and so forth, our partner, Klipfolio makes sure that your web analytics, sales and finances, and project management goals are transparent throughout your company. I personally have a screen dedicated to Klipfolio dashboards in front of my desk and it really makes my life easier.

Cyfe

An all-in-one business dashboard app, Cyfe’s goal is to help you make better business decisions by bringing all of your business performance data under one roof. However, to benefit from its full potential, you would have to sign up for a Premium account.

Curious to hear more? Check their tutorial.

Plecto

With varied integrations, such as Zendesk, Pipedrive, Podio, leaderboards, and custom recognition features, Plecto will drive your team’s motivation sky high. If sales are your main focus, Plecto is what you’re looking for. Also, I must say the pricing plan is quite eye-catching.

Want to check all of their features? Click here.

Datapine

Small, medium, large companies – it doesn’t matter. Datapine can provide you with accurate KPIs in the most professional way, be it management, finance, sales, or marketing-related. Plus, I really enjoyed their customer support. For example, booking a demo and understanding their product took no time at all.

Click here for a tutorial teaser of how it works.

Axosoft

Monitor your workflow, connect to an ever-growing list of tools and services, and make sure that all relevant stakeholders in your projects get the essential details with Axosoft. I would also add that these dashboards load very fast, so you won’t have to worry about delays in your content.

Tableau Public

By connecting and visualizing your data in a matter of minutes, Tableau Public can make you forget about the old-school spreadsheets and reports that used to clutter your life.

I like the fact that Tableau has a broad service offering. Also, they are pretty active in terms of social events. So if you have any doubts, you can always check if they’re holding an event in your neighborhood.

Want more insights on how to use it? Click here for some guidelines.

Cervinoboard

Integrating Facebook, MailChimp, Google Analytics and Adwords, and many more, Cervinoboard focuses on online marketing agencies. They deliver smart services that save a lot of time for agencies that wish to deploy and maintain large amounts of dashboards. A few newer services are still in beta, but this is a young startup to watch.

Dundas

A business solution that is able to monitor data from a wide range of industries. From banking and finance, education, government to pharmaceutical transport and logistics, retail, and so on. With more than 20 years of experience on the market, Dundas has dedicated over 7 of them to their dashboard project development.

However, if you want to explore their service offering, you should definitely consider signing up for a Premium account. If this sounds like a deal, get started with a free trial!

Zoho

Boosting your sales, managing daily activities, or stepping up your productivity game – Zoho has helped business professionals take care of all these for more than a decade. If I were looking for a very complex software provider, I would most likely choose Zoho.

Want to get a better sense of your data? Watch this video!

DashThis

Be it SEO, SEM, PPC, or social media, DashThis has got your back. It automatically gathers all your client data into one dashboard report.

If you are a digital agency, DashThis dashboards might be just what you’re looking for. But feel free to check their demo videos here.

AppInsights

Lets you easily combine the data your team needs and has customizable dashboards. What else is there? Oh, yes, the fact that it can be tailored to nearly every market from digital agencies to server admins and sales teams. Quite a tool for startups, I’d say.

Plotly

Incredibly user-friendly features and very intuitive dashboards. Not to mention the sharp design of their live graphs. Sometimes, it can take a while to load, but it’s worth the wait. The pricing plan: really appealing.

Learn more on how to use Plotly by clicking here.

SimpleKPI

The name says it all because SimpleKPI is just that – simple. And when it comes to monitoring your business reports, that’s what you want. The visuals are nicely put together and easy to understand.

Databox

Databox has a clever drag-and-drop editor that makes data visualization a breeze. It has a ton of integration options so you can connect all data sources, no matter where you want your information to come from.

Sisense

This AI-driven analytics platform offers ready-to-use business intelligence dashboard reports for a wide variety of industries. You can experiment with sample KPIs, data sources, and visualizations for topics such as social responsibility, education, SaaS, and more.

See all their options as well as dashboard examples here.

Screenful

Screenful is the easiest way to visualize and share your project progress using data from your existing tools. It integrates with the most commonly used tasks management tools such as Jira, Trello, Asana, GitHub, and Asana.

The visual dashboards allow tracking key production metrics such as lead and cycle times and help detect any project bottlenecks.

Grow

Many services can’t offer a swift implementation but take months to get your solution up and running. Grow claims they implement 8x faster than competitors, meaning you don’t have to wait to get started with analyzing data. You can create role-specific KPI dashboards for an unlimited amount of team members, which is also a nice feature.

Geckoboard

Sometimes, one dashboard just isn’t enough. That’s why Geckoboards lets you display several different dashboards on the same screen. You can even add your own logo for a customized look and feel that matches your brand.

Target Dashboard

You can automatically merge data with this service. That makes it easy for you to get an overview of all metrics, goals, and KPIs without having to worry about the time spent trying to do it yourself. Target Dashboard includes support in their pricing plan, and that’s something we applaud. Bills can pile up when problems arise if support isn’t included, so that’s definitely something to look for when choosing a dashboard service.

Octoboard

With Octoboard, you can create public dashboards for easy sharing with other teams or clients. Octoboard also offers activity monitoring for brands and bloggers on social platforms. For those out there that want to glance at competitors while simultaneously looking at their own engagement, this is superb. That’s why I’ve put it as the last in the executive dashboard section because it would fit just as well in the next section; social walls.

Social Walls

Presumably, you want to track your social media lifespan or organize a kick-ass event. Social walls can help you stay on the pulse of your social media community – both in the office and at the conference center. These are some suggestions that caught my eye.

SocialWall Pro

SocialWall Pro provides social walls to reach, engage, and connect live audiences at events, meetings, conferences, brand activations, and online.

It’s a fully stacked solution, supporting all major social media channels, plus SMS, emails, and web messages. You can also use cool added features, like a gamification tool, sponsorship presentation, and performance analytics. 

Strea.ma

Want to keep track of your social media activity for a certain event or conference? With so many platforms out there, why not bring all of them into one easy-to-use display so that everyone can see your tailored stream of content unfolding in real-time? Start with a free trial and then you can decide among Plus, Premium, or customized plans.

Juicer

Meet Juicer, a social media aggregator that sets your filters up, moderates your posts, and analyzes your social media engagement. What’s more, Juicer has 18 integrations and a modest pricing plan.

Worth giving a try!

Walls.io

Unleashing your hashtags and building your social wall with data integrated from over 15 platforms is a no-brainer if you go with Walls.io. Keep your audience updated with Walls.io’s customizable next-generation social wall and your next event is sure to be a success.

Basic no-frills dashboards

Suppose you are only looking to create and share your slide decks. Or maybe you want to focus on showcasing your data through charts. Here are some no-frills options that work great:

Slides

Slides allows you to create and share great complex presentations online, in your very own browser without the need to download anything. See for yourself by clicking here.

Project Manager

On the hunt for real-time dashboards for your business? With Project Manager, you can combine powerful project planning and scheduling features with collaboration tools for teams, plan waterfall projects, and adjust due dates. Project Manager takes project planning to a whole new level, I must say.

Datawrapper

Into maps & charts? Then Datawrapper is the optimum solution for you. Back up your presentation with this great visualization tool and you might just get some applause by the end of it.

What’s your favorite dashboard? Who should I look into next on my hunt for great dashboards you can use with Airtame? Let us know in the comments!

Curious about what we do? Here’s a short video explaining how Airtame works:

The post 27 dashboards you can easily display on your office screen with Airtame 2 appeared first on Airtame.

We love our interns. We can’t prosper without brilliant young minds, and they should feel the same way about spending their time with us. It’s definitely a win-win situation when all goes well. Finding and retaining the right candidates is crucial to our success, because a successful internship program lead to happy hires, both in the outer world of work and, sometimes, right here at Airtame HQ.

It sounds simple, but while hiring interns is one thing, attracting, maintaining and developing the right ones is another. Our investment in the right people is always based on the understanding that we will help them grow professionally, and we simply can’t stress enough how important it is to create a lasting experience.

At Airtame, we’ve tried to optimize the recruitment process — both for our sake and the candidate’s. That’s why we came up with a successful 4-step internship plan that is now a standard procedure for all new Marketing interns.

Step 1: The Intern Recruitment Setup & Process

The first step of the internship is to find and “recruit” young talents to join our team for a 3-month duration. Here’s how we go about the process:

• Platforms: We “scout” our interns through various avenues including career fairs held at colleges and universities, LinkedIn, referrals, and job postings on Graduateland, The Hub, Glassdoor and our very own Airtame.com
• Responsibility: The person in charge of reviewing applications and hiring will be the direct supervisor of the interns so that both the intern and the manager establish a connection from the very beginning.

After receiving the intern’s resume, the supervisor will:

• Review the resume and reply with a marketing challenge test meant to showcase the English language proficiency and marketing approach.
• After reviewing the test results, the supervisor will schedule a phone call/Skype interview to get a better sense of who the potential new hire is. We recommend Skype — it works nicely for breaking the ice. During the interview we make sure candidates get a good understanding of the work we do and what’s required of them. We also discuss why they want to be a part of the internship program and culture at Airtame.
• Depending on the performance at the first stage, the person in charge will schedule an in-person interview with the highest ranking manager from the Marketing department. This interview stage is meant to establish the cultural fit and confirm the selection criteria based on which the intern was chosen.
• A decision will be made within 2 weeks at the most, and the applicant will be informed and given feedback on it no matter the outcome.

Step 2: The Internship Onboarding Preparation

Hired. Now what?

We get our interns ready by following an extensive onboarding program for the first week. We think this is critical to the success of the internship. Overall, the goal of the onboarding program is to provide the intern with all the necessary skills and tools to be successful on and off the field. The onboarding steps we follow at Airtame are:

• Announce the new hire in front of everyone at one of our biweekly meetings.
• Give the intern a tour of the office and set up with desk, screen etc.
• Initiate them with a burning, yet healthy ginger shot from the coffee shop across the street (it’s a tradition that goes way back to the birth of the company).
• Introduce the intern to the tools we use: Basecamp, Intercom, MixMax, Slack, etc.
• Decide together with the intern on a working schedule.
• Schedule 1:1s with all relevant employees in order to get a better understanding of who does what.
• Have the intern test drive Airtame.

Step 3: Players in Action — Tasks

Interns often get stuck doing mundane tasks or assignments that are nowhere near their skillset or desired line of work. While we try not to set them up for easy no-brainers, interns should still be open to getting their hands dirty. It’s a balancing act that we’re very aware of.

The first month in the life of a Marketing intern at Airtame consists of:

• Onboarding and introduction.
• Attending the monthly and weekly meetings, meeting minutes, monthly reports, 1:1s.
• Performing tasks and complying with the jointly agreed KPIs.
• Reporting weekly as well as monthly.

Measuring accomplishments doesn’t just help the company, although that’s certainly part of it. Of course, we get a better sense of our workforce and the tasks at hand, but interns are welcome to use these stats for future purposes too.

Beyond the work, we make every intern feel integrate to the team, whether this means being invited to our social events, or our yearly workathons (last year we visited sunny Corfu). This brings an added sense of togetherness and a flat hierarchical structure, which enables both personal growth and cross-department collaboration.

Step 4: Bringing Home the Win!

Before the interns finish their internships, it’s important for us to recognize their growth and contributions to our company. If by the end of the internship, both company and intern agree, a longer collaboration can be set in motion.

At the end of the internship, we conduct an exit interview. From an HR perspective, this is absolutely crucial. During this interview, the supervisor follows up on the intern’s goals and KPI compliance. Since interning at Airtame can often be conducted as part of study credit, we also make sure to follow up with any university or teacher to evaluate their performance.

The offboarding interview gives us an insight into possible improvements, changes that need implementation and ensuring the overall quality and well-being of our interns. Besides feeling challenged and empowered, our interns should feel satisfied with their time spent with us, and should have had some fun! Even if they don’t stay onboard, they’ve been part of a valuable learning experience that hopefully inspires them going forward.

Finally, we recognize the interns by offering a small token of appreciation as well as a written recommendation.

From the very first day of my internship, it was evident that I would contribute to a meaningful project. My assigned tasks are insightful and play a significant role in enriching the product. It’s an incredible opportunity to shape my practical knowledge because it’s such a vibrant place. This will be invaluable in my future career.

Viktor Zuska, Intern at Airtame

There’s a certain bonding experience going on while interning, which is why many interns get a foot in the door with us. They gain valuable practical knowledge and a chance to apply their academic skills. The work experience gained could very well help reinforce an interest already present for a young professional embarking on the first steps of the career path.

In turn, we get the opportunity to secure top talent early on and a fresh perspective on our work. Having interns onboard energizes our entire workforce in addition to giving us a competitive advantage. Who knows? They might just come up with solutions we wouldn’t have thought of. Internships can and should be invaluable for both parties — and we strive to make it so.

Looking for an internship at Airtame? Apply here. And don’t forget to check out our tips on how to land your dream job.

This piece was originally featured on CPHFTW’s Medium blog.

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