Key performance indicators (KPIs) first appeared in the 1990s with the aura of mystery that accompanies any new idea. The mystery has gone, and now we all know now that KPIs have no rigorous definition, but are just metrics that summarize the state of a business as well as possible. They can sometimes be more of a hinderance than a help, particularly if we have too many of them, and so some skill is needed to create a set of KPIs that give the broadest possible picture using the fewest possible metrics.
Traditional KPIs are historical measures of performance, that often have some level of lag associated with them. This was the best we could do using traditional BI platforms. Sometimes the lag is not an issue, and sometimes it is. The new generation of dashboard software offer wholly new possibilities for KPIs, and specifically the ability to predict future values, find correlations between KPIs, and create near real-time dashboards displaying KPIs. These free KPI dashboard software support the data exploration and discovery that are necessary for more meaningful KPIs.
Free KPI Dashboard Software 2017
Zoho Reports is an online reporting and business intelligence service that helps you easily analyze your business data, and create insightful reports & dashboards for informed decision-making. It allows you to create and share powerful reports. The free service limits users (2) and data, and has cut down functionality.
Bittle good value online service.
- Ideal for the SME with white labelling option.
- Collaboration features and mobile access.
- Connectors to many database sources, spreadsheets, online apps.
- Graphics library includes donut, pie, histogram, 3D, bar, gauge, funnel, maps, radar, treemap etc.
- Free single user subscription up to $600/mo for large data volumes.
Cyfe is easy to use and extremely good value.
- Extensive support for internal and external data sources.
- Many graph and chart types including line, spline, area, area-spline, stacked area, column, … , pie, donut, list, funnel, tables – and so on.
- A top contender for people considering a social media monitoring dashboard.
- The whole environment is widget driven, and so it is very easy to connect with social sources such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (many others too).
- A free account is offered for people with modest needs, or the Premium service offers pretty well unlimited everything for $19 per month.
Dash supports real-time dashboards for websites, business and personal use. The free version supports a single dashboard.
Dasheroo is a cloud based dashboard service, allowing small and medium businesses, as well as individuals, to create various charts and graphs and aggregate them into dashboards. There is a free service for people with modest needs (max 4 dashboards), and pricing is very reasonable for more demanding customers. The term “Insight Apps” is used for widgets that display the most meaningful data from a variety of apps. Dasheroo connectors for applications include – Facebook, HubSpot, Instagram, Google AdWords, Google Analytics, LinkedIn, MailChimp, PayPal, Pinterest, Salesforce, Shopify, SurveyMonkey, Twitter YouTube and several others. A custom data import API is available (JSON and Push API Web Hooks).
Dashzen supports the creation of both private and public dashboards in the cloud. Private dashboards can be shared with nominated people. A variety of gadgets make up a dashboard, some of which are connected with various data sources (salesforce, Twitter, StackExchange etc).
InetSoft provide a free version of their excellent Style Scope platform. Style Scope Free Edition is a small-footprint server that delivers Web-based interactive Flash dashboards and visualizations that can be shared within an organization. The Java-based application can be installed on any Windows, Unix, or Mac desktop and can be connected to data in standard relational databases as well as spreadsheets.
Qlik Sense – sophisticated desktop and enterprise dashboards
- Very powerful desktop and enterprise dashboard and data visualization platform.
- Supports large number of data sources with an optional service for a large number of online data services.
- Associative engine makes combining data sources straight forward.
- Large number of chart types and can be extended if needed.
- Desktop version free with a free cloud dashboard sharing service. Enterprise edition requires server license.
Slemma is a cloud BI and dashboard software that allows devs and non-devs alike to do ad hoc visual analysis against data. Slemma plugs in directly to the most popular databases (including XMLA data sources), cloud storage and cloud services, and allows to bypass the need for a warehouse. It is easy to create a dashboard by using intuitive drag-and-drop interface or writing and running SQLs to build charts.
With the dashboards created in Slemma, team and clients can access dashboards through the web. And they can slice and dice the data in real-time by dimensions and measures for their own needs. The platform also supports data transformation features like aggregation, calculations, filtering, sorting and ordering data.
A free version supports Excel and CSV files and integration with Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive. Paid subscriptions start at US$ 29 per month.