Before creating a data application, you have to define who is going to use your application and what the objective of the application is. Patricia L. Saporito, in Applied Insurance Analytics, Pearson Education LTD defines three main user groups:
Executive management: They need key metrics, very visual applications and should be able to access the analysis from different devices
Middle managers: They need key metrics and the ability to navigate from aggregate data to detailed data
Analysts: This group needs to be able to manipulate data on the lowest grain and create new metrics
You also need to be familiar with the metrics you are going to use in your application. A special type of metric is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI). KPIs explain the performance of a business process or activity; Sales versus Objective would be a good KPI for a Sales Performance dashboard. As you can see, KPIs are metrics that illustrate performance but, to understand...
