Infographics for everyone

Wouldn't it be great if you could broadcast sales performance data, call center wait times or other mission critical information to your team members? What if you could deliver this information visually and update it in real-time?

The solution is dashboards.  Dashboards let you take snapshots of your raw business data and generate charts or infographics in real-time.  It's the perfect way to visualize your data.

Dashboards used to require complex software packages and dedicated programmers but things are changing with the introduction of web based dashboard tools.

I recently stumbled upon a product called Infocaptor that puts the power of dashboards in the hands of  people who may not have access to the resources usually required for this type of application.

Infocaptor lets anyone create dashboards and display information from any business class database (MS-SQL, Oracle, etc...).  You can also display charts using data extracted from XML files, Excel spreadsheets and Access databases.  Dashboards are updated dynamically so your audience only sees the most current information.

Here are a few examples:

• Sales/Revenue/Production statistics
• Call wait times
• Tracking social media (Twitter followers, Facebook metrics)
• Wordpress metrics
• Search engine position trackers

You can create an Infocaptor dashboard for virtually any type of data then publish it through a web server. This solution is compatible with any digital signage software application that supports HTML content.

The advantages of broadcasting this content using a digital signage solution are obvious.  You can publish a dashboard inside a template with other relevant information (the current time, AP news, etc...).  You can also display a series of dashboards in sequence or change dashboards at various times of the day.

Infocaster is easy to use, inexpensive and quite flexible.  You no longer need to be a Fortune 500 company to have access to sophisticated dashboard tools but if you are, you will be able to do more at less cost.

Tapping into corporate databases for business intelligence has traditionally been a difficult and expensive process.  Tools like Infocaptor lets companies of any size publish sophisticated dashboards with little effort.