Impacts of a KPI Dashboard & Why They're More Than Just Increased Visibility

Jack
Jun 20
6 min read

We talk a lot about dashboards here at Pineapple. They’re visually appealing, but they’re also way more than just fancy charts (if they’re done right). So let’s skip the obvious benefits of seeing your data and getting it automated. You’ve heard all that before.

The real question is: what does a dashboard actually do for your business?

We recently built a dashboard for an eCommerce company that was testing a free trial program. Their main question? Are people sticking around after they sign up? We tracked that with cohort retention (i.e. grouping users by the month they started their trial). But that was just the start. The impacts made to the business were more than just visibility into their data.

Here's why that dashboard—and dashboards in general—are more than just visually appealing “pictures”. They can be true game-changers.

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1. Faster Feedback = Smarter Moves to see the impact from your KPI dashboard

Running your business off of monthly reports is like checking the score of a basketball game after it's over. You can’t call a timeout. You can’t adjust the game plan. You're reacting to the past instead of being able to adjust on the fly.

With a dashboard, you’re looking at the game while it’s happening.

Tangible Example: Marketing Money Pit or Money Maker?

Let’s say you launch a $10,000 campaign to drive free trial signups.

Without a dashboard: You find out weeks later it’s been underperforming. Half your budget is already gone— $5,000 wasted.
With a dashboard: You see poor conversions in week 1. You pause or pivot the campaign and save $4,000+ in wasted spend. Oh, and you still have time to hit your original goals. We can’t guarantee that, but we can at least assure you that you’ll have time to implement some new copy or whatever needs to be done.

A dashboard can quite literally save you thousands by allowing you to act fast. Plus, you look like a genius for acting fast and you limit a big opportunity cost of not taking action.

Related Real-Life Case Study

Company details
- ~$100m revenue
- Ecommerce, in the pet industry
Problem
- They have two main systems that have decent individual reporting, but there is no way to combine them and get the true segmentation (cohort analysis) needed
- Manual exports with lots of Excel work could produce a report, but it was very time consuming and had questionable results because of it
Solution
- We incorporated both data sets into a central data warehouse
- We built an automated, daily updating, dashboard in Looker Studio that shows the specified cohorts and their retention by month
- It also shows supporting details, as requested, that we're not previously available in the Excel file
Result
- Pre-dashboard: monthly manual data pulls
- Post-dashboard: Automated dashboard to show the exact cohort breakdown needed with no manual effort required and immediate feedback on the success of the program
Impact
- Specific campaign pushes based on ones that worked previously
- Strategically placed email reach outs to improve retention
- Pricing impacts based on the ideal cohorts
Example dashboard (with fake, obfuscated data) below

See More About our Ecommerce Dashboards

2. Optimize From “Good” to “Best Quarter Ever”

A dashboard gives you the visibility to spot small improvements that add up big. Even when things are going fine, they could be going better. Or, better yet, when things are going bad, a couple small adjustments could make things profitable.

Tangible Example: Closing More Sales

Your sales team closed 20 deals this quarter. Not bad, but the goal was 30.

Without a dashboard: You find out too late. You don’t know why you missed it, so you do the same thing next quarter and hope for better luck.
With a dashboard: You spot the issue in real time—there’s a drop-off at the proposal stage. You coach your team on closing strategies. Boom, you hit 105 deals next quarter instead.

That’s $20,000 in extra revenue (assuming $2,000/deal), just from better visibility and timely action.

Related Real-Life Case Study

Company details
- ~$1m revenue
- Professional services company
Problem
- Shockingly low conversion rate of leads into clients
- Clunky process to see current pipeline (leading to not enough attention put on it)
Solution
- We built an automated, daily updating, dashboard in Looker Studio, linked to Hubspot, that shows the overview of the lead pipeline along with specific lead details for in depth conversations
Result
- Pre-dashboard: gut-driven low conversion of leads and only conversational understanding of the pipeline
- Post-dashboard: Automated dashboard to show the exact status of the pipeline and easier conversations (because they were data-driven) around why leads fell off
Impact
- Going from 0.5 conversions a month up to 2
- Less time spent on the proposal process
- Standardized conversation to identify the right leads to pursue, saving even more time
Example dashboard (with fake, obfuscated data) below

See More About our Sales Dashboards

3. One Layer Deeper for Strategy Impacts: Know Your Profitable Clients (and Your Costly Ones)

This one hits home for our service-based clients (hi, fellow consultants!). You probably have clients you love but who drain your time. And others who are a bit... difficult... but wildly profitable.

A dashboard tells you exactly where you stand.

Tangible Example: Profit Per Client

Without a dashboard: You think you’re hitting your profit goals overall. But three long-time clients are quietly losing you $2,000 each. You never noticed because it’s buried in the total numbers.
With a dashboard: You see the real profit per client. You renegotiate terms with the low-performers and refocus on getting more clients like your top earners.

That could mean recovering $6,000 AND generating $10,000–$20,000 in new high-margin work—all because the dashboard showed you what was hidden in plain sight. Talk about impact from a simple KPI dashboard.

Related Real-Life Case Study

Related Real-Life Case Study (Example)

Company details
- ~$2M revenue
- Marketing Agency
Problem
- Overall profitability wasn’t changing despite increasing revenue.
- Difficulty identifying which services and clients were profitable
- Some reliance on annual profit & loss statements which offered no timely operational insights.
Solution
- We integrated QuickBooks data with Clockify (time tracking) data into a central database
- We built an automated, daily-updating dashboard in Looker Studio that calculated "Profit per Client”. The deep dive went into hours spent by client and project to quantify the level of profitability
Result
- Pre-dashboard: Profitability was only at a company level, and seriously lagging
- Post-dashboard: Specific client call outs for improvements and restructuring
Impact
- Identified 3 long term clients who took up significantly more share of time than their share of profit
- Built a new scope document and guideline to make sure projects didn’t run off track
- Developed a new theme to team meetings - focusing on profit per client instead of fielding “how to” questions that were better off in training sessions
Example dashboard (related to the live one)

Find your One KPI and How to Track It

4. Soft Benefits That Are Hard to Ignore

Not everything is dollars and cents. Dashboards also bring value in ways that aren’t as easy to measure—but definitely matter.

Less Time Manually Reporting

Automating reports saves hours each week across your team.

Ballpark estimate? 3 people × 10 hours/week × $30/hour = $45,000/year. That’s just labor—not even counting what else they could be doing with that time.

Everyone on the Same Page

No more debates about whose spreadsheet is right. One source of truth means better collaboration and faster decisions. Your meetings just got way more productive (and you’ll have less meetings, too!)

Clearer Accountability

When KPIs are visible, everyone knows what success looks like. That means more ownership, more alignment, and better performance without micromanaging.