Connecting directly to the primary data source

A major requirement for all dashboards is to be able to easily update them as new activities occur in the business processes the dashboards track, meaning you should set up your dashboard to easily pull in new data and reflect updated metrics and analysis on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Achieving this requires connecting directly to the primary data source.

Primary data sources are the original and first source of the data used for analysis and reporting. If a company uses an accounting application for its financial transactions and record-keeping and has staff who post transactions on the application daily, that application is the primary data source for a financial analysis dashboard. As a consultant or internal data analyst for the company, creating organization-wide dashboards, you might be given Excel or CSV exports of data from the accounting application to use in building the financial analysis dashboards.

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