Getting meaningful insight from raw marketing data takes more than just booting up some new dashboard software. Either your team or your software provider has to perform a series of complex data management and reporting processes before your visualization will lead to insight you can trust. Data intake, data cleansing and normalization, data enrichment, data storage and report design are crucial steps that must be planned for and flawlessly executed. The question is—who’s going to do it? Before you pull the trigger on a new dashboard solution, be sure you have a clear understanding of which data management and reporting processes your software partner will provide and which you’ll have to do yourself. Download 40 Questions To Ask Prospective Dashboard Partners and make sure all of your bases are covered before you buy.

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As you shop for a marketing dashboard, use this list of questions to vet
individual vendors. By discussing these points with your candidates in detail,
you’ll end up with a complete picture of what’s required from both parties to
get your new dashboards launched.
ASK:
Can you take all the data we have, or do you have a menu of APIs we need to
choose from? (If they only offer API access, be sure all the tools you use have
APIs available, otherwise you will have blind spots.)
How do we get data into the system? Can you pull from APIs? Can we publish to a
secure server, which you then pull down? Can you take spreadsheets? .CSVs? Can our
team email files straight into your system?
Do we need to upload data in neat rows and columns, fully tagged?
How do we know if data is in or not? Is there a confirmation process?
What metrics do you recommend we pull in from each of our priority data
sources and channels? Can you provide us with guidance?
What if a data source has a value that we don’t want to pull in? Can we pull in
some data but not other data from a single data source? How does that work?
STAGE 1: DATA INTAKE
Give the vendor a list of all your data sources—online, offline, business
outcomes (sales), revenue data, and brand/equity outcomes (brand tracker
or survey data).
Key objective: Determine whether there are any restrictions on the types of
data that can be entered into the system, and how the uploading process is
accomplished.
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40 QUESTIONS
TO ASK PROSPECTIVE
DASHBOARD PARTNERS

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ASK:
What is our role in fundamental data cleanup? What is your role?
Who determines what marketing metrics and KPIs to pull in? Do we need to define
our complete and final data schema from scratch when we get started with your tool,
or do you have a starting point for us?
Can you transform messy Excel files into a structured format?
Who is responsible for de-duping, normalizing and reconciling variations in field
names, etc., before we start looking at dashboards?
Can you make metadata consistent? For example, if we have varying tags such
as “Southern California”, “So. Cal.” and “So_Calif” how does your system know
these are the same thing?
If you don’t make metadata consistent for us, do you have ETL tools that allow
our team of data architects and analysts to perform data transformations within
your application?
If multiple datasets contain the same metric name but different values, how do
you determine the source of truth for the metric?
How do you ensure that metrics have common definitions and are well
understood by all users who later access the dashboards?
Do you maintain a glossary of all metric definitions and properties so that
metrics always mean the same thing?
When someone is viewing a chart, will each metric’s definition and properties be
readily available to users?
ASK:
Do you offer strategic advice on best practices for using metadata to enrich
our dataset?
STAGE 2: DATA CLEANSING AND NORMALIZATION
Key objective: Determine who is responsible for data cleanup and
normalization, and precisely what each responsible party needs to do.
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STAGE 3: DATA ENRICHMENT
Key objective: Determine who is responsible for data enrichment, and the
specific responsibilities each party has in the process.
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How can we create aggregates of data—for example, tag all paid media mentions
as “paid” for future paid and earned media analyses? How do you support adding
metadata to underlying metrics?
How are formulas and derived metrics supported in your platform? Can we
create formulas (e.g., run rate, average, rate) based on underlying metrics and
KPIs in the application? Or do we need to calculate those metrics before they go
into your system?
ASK:
Do you warehouse the data—the structured files that we upload into your
system—or do you just allow us to visualize “snapshots” of our data?
What happens if people upload different and conflicting datasets?
Can we easily export all (or subsets of) historical data from your system in order
to merge it with other datasets or run analyses outside your platform?
Do you have an API so that we can pull data out of your tool?
ASK:
Do you offer standard reports that reflect marketing best practices? And/or
suggestions for analyses to run based on best practices?
Do you offer templatized reports based on marketing best practices that we
can customize?
How user-friendly is your chart creator/querying tool? Is it designed to be used
by marketers or advanced analysts?
Do you offer flexible permissions and roles for who can see select data in reports?
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STAGE 4: DATA STORAGE
Key objective: Determine how accessible your data is and who maintains
ownership and control over it.
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STAGE 5: REPORT DESIGN
Key objective: Determine the reporting capabilities, customization and
training the vendor offers.
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Will we have an account manager who provides guidance on dashboard and
scorecard design and trains all our users? Does our account representative have
a marketing background?
Is training and support included in the price or does it cost extra?
ASK:
Are your data visualization and exploration tools designed for IT professionals,
data analysts or marketers?
Are there many chart types available? Does the system suggest chart types
based on the selected data?
Can we visualize omnichannel datasets—data that comes from many
disparate sources?
Will our dashboards have the ability to show us what’s happening across the
buyer’s journey in terms of awareness, engagement, purchase, advocacy, etc.?
Do you offer drill-in and drill-down capabilities?
When looking at a dashboard, can we easily slice the dataset in a different
way or otherwise creatively explore our data, or are we limited to viewing
canned reports?
Are dashboards shareable, and are there varying levels of access we can grant?
Can we view our dashboards on web and mobile?
Are we able to easily export dashboard charts and graphs into PowerPoint for
other types of reporting and analysis?
Do you support other visuals such as scorecards?
Do you offer easy benchmarking such as “vs. previous period”, “vs. last year” and
“vs. a target or goal”?
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STAGE 6: DATA VISUALIZATION
Key objective: Determine how flexible the vendor’s chart options are, along
with their solutions for sharing, drilling down and exporting.
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