If you use Zendesk, you will likely have come across Zendesk's native reporting and analytics tool, Zendesk Explore. This allows you to create custom views of the metrics in your Zendesk account.

But what if you want to create reports and dashboards that visualize data from multiple Zendesk accounts? Sadly, this is not possible in Zendesk Explore.

Fortunately, it is possible to visualise data from several Zendesk instances in Geckoboard. In this article we’ll explore how you can use Geckoboard to visualize metrics from several Zendesk accounts in a single dashboard.

Why might you need to report on multiple Zendesk instances?  

There are several reasons why you might need to report on more than one Zendesk account simultaneously. 

• You’re a Zendesk consultant or implementor, and you want to monitor several clients’ Zendesk metrics at once.
• You own more than one business and want to keep tabs on Support KPIs from both of your businesses, in the same dashboard
• You run several brands within the same business. And these are operationally separate, with different accounts. 

If you find yourself in one of these situations, you might already find the only way to keep track of your metrics is to continually log in and out of your different accounts. Fortunately, there is another way. 

How to report on multiple accounts with Geckoboard 

In the same way you can use Geckoboard to create a KPI dashboard that visualizes data from multiple sources (such as HubSpot, LinkedIn, Salesforce and Google Analytics) – you can also use Geckoboard to create dashboards that visualize data from multiple accounts within the same data source.  

That means you can easily create a custom dashboard, which gives you all the data you need in one place. Geckoboard also auto-refreshes its data sources in real-time, so you know your metrics will always be up to date. 

So let’s find out how you can build a multi-data source dashboard. 

Step 1: Sign up to Geckoboard and connect Zendesk

Head to Geckoboard to sign up for a 14-day free trial. Next, start building your dashboard selecting one of the Zendesk data sources.

Step 2: Build a widget with Zendesk data

Now you’ve connected Zendesk, you can build your first widget. A widget is just a type of data visualization – you can choose numbers, line charts, leaderboard, funnels or gauges.

You can also add further context to your widgets. For example, you might add a status indicator to alert you when you are not meeting your SLAs. This helps your team quickly understand how to interpret the data on the dashboard, and take action.

Step 3: Connect data from multiple Zendesk accounts

When you add a widget, you’ll notice there is a dropdown at the top left hand side of the screen where you can connect additional Zendesk connections. Just click the drop down and select 'Add connection'.  

Step 4: Complete your dashboard by adding more widgets

Continue adding widgets until you’ve visualized all your most important data from across your different accounts. You might complete the picture by including visualizations from other data sources such as Aircall, Jira, Facebook, or Spreadsheets.

Conclusion

There we have it. Now you can see all your Zendesk data in one place. No more wasting time logging into different accounts.

If your business uses HubSpot for sales, alongside common marketing tools like Google Analytics and LinkedIn, you might eventually find it becomes time-consuming to keep track of all your KPIs. 

It’s not just that it’s time-consuming for leaders who need to monitor these performance metrics. The biggest downside is that teams and individuals stay in their silos.  

That’s because it’s hard for the sales team to stay on top of what’s happening with marketing tools; and it’s hard for the marketing team to stay on top of what’s happening in HubSpot. 

Most teams try to address this with regular manual reporting. But this can be both ineffective and inefficient. 

Instead, we’re going to explore how Geckoboard can bring together data from these tools, so you can create custom dashboards that show you exactly the metrics you want to see. 

Instead of hassling your team to share reports and updates, you can create a solution that saves you time, and means everyone stays aware of the metrics that matter. 

What is Geckoboard?

Geckoboard is a KPI dashboard tool that helps you monitor your most important business metrics in real-time. In addition to HubSpot, LinkedIn and Google Analytics, it also connects to over 90 data sources such as Salesforce, Shopify, Zendesk, Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram and Google Sheets.

Unlike more heavyweight BI tools, Geckoboard is different because it’s built for non-technical teams, who want to access data in real-time. 

We’re talking about:

• Ease of use: You can connect your data in a few clicks, and build your dashboard in a few minutes. No coding or specialist knowledge required. 
• Real-time monitoring: Geckoboard auto-refreshes and supports the fastest possible refresh rates across all our integrations, regardless of your plan. 
• Designed to be seen: Sharing options for TV display, desktop, mobile, email and Slack. 

Build a dashboard to display HubSpot, LinkedIn and Google Analytics data

Next we’ll show you, step-by-step, how to build a dashboard that visualizes data from HubSpot, LinkedIn and Google Analytics. 

Step 1: Sign up to Geckoboard 

You can start your fully-featured free trial here – no credit card required. 

Step 2: Connect LinkedIn 

Depending on whether you want to visualize data from your company page (i.e. page followers) or your LinkedIn Advertising campaigns, choose LinkedIn or LinkedIn Ads. 

I’ll choose LinkedIn Ads. 

Next I’ll select one of the presets: Ad spend. (But if you want to explore the full range of metrics you can visualize, then select “Build your own widget”)

The next screen will ask you to connect your LinkedIn account. 

Step 3: Build your first widget 

A widget is just a single data visualization we’ll use to populate our dashboard. On the next screen I’m going to fine-tune our widget to get it to show the exact metrics we want to see. 

To start off, the widget displays our ad spend for the past 30 days as a simple number widget. 

However, on my dashboard, I want to see metrics related to the past 7 days. So I’m going to change the time filter, and also include a comparison to the previous seven days. 

Now I’m happy with my widget. I'm going to add it to my dashboard. 

Step 4: Add another widget and group them

As well as visualizing our overall spend, I’d like to monitor how it’s changing day to day. So next, I’m going to create a line-chart that shows the weekly spend by day. 

To do this, you can duplicate the existing widget then edit it to visualize as a line chart. 

After adding it to the dashboard, you can group related widgets together, resize them and add a title like in the images below. 

Step 5: Add Google Analytics widgets

Next, I’m going to repeat the exact same process to add data from Google Analytics. 

• Click 'Add widget'
• Select Google Analytics 4 from the data source menu
• Connect your account
• Then build a widget

As you can see, I’ve created two groups of two widgets. One group to track the overall number of sessions on the website over the past seven days, and one group to track the number of engaged sessions over the past seven days.

Step 6: Add HubSpot widgets 

Next, I’m going to repeat the exact same process to add data from my HubSpot account. 

• Click 'Add widget'
• Select HubSpot from the data source menu
• Connect your account
• Then build a widget 

By selecting ‘Feeds’ from the display menu, I can create a live feed of all our recently created (or recently closed) deals, which is great for keeping teams in the loop, and starting conversations. 

I’ve also built a widget that visualizes our Win Rate using a gauge visualization. By adding a status indicator, I can show that anything above 40% is positive.

Step 7: Share your dashboard

Once you’ve built your dashboard, it will auto-refresh in real time. You can create a sharing link to share your dashboard with colleagues. Or if you really want your team to engage with their KPIs, why not display it on a TV screen using our Send to TV feature? 

Either way, you can relax knowing you have saved yourself countless hours spent producing manual reports. And all for a few minutes work. 

Try Geckoboard for free here

We all know HubSpot has some excellent reporting features for visualizing your key sales data. 

But what happens when you want to create dashboards and reports that visualize data from multiple HubSpot accounts? 

Can you achieve this in HubSpot?

Unfortunately not. But never fear, in this article we’ll explore how you can use Geckoboard to visualize metrics from several HubSpot accounts in a single dashboard.

Why might you need to report on multiple HubSpot accounts?  

There are many reasons why you might need to report on several HubSpot accounts simultaneously. 

• You’re a HubSpot consultant, and want to monitor several clients’ HubSpot accounts at once.
• You own more than one business and want to keep tabs on sales KPIs from both businesses in the same dashboard
• You operate several brands within the same business, which are operationally separate, with separate accounts. 

In these situations, the only way to keep track of your metrics would be to continually log in and out of your different accounts. Fortunately, there is another way. 

How to report on multiple accounts with Geckoboard 

In the same way you can use Geckoboard to create a KPI dashboard that visualizes data from multiple sources (such as HubSpot, Linkedin, Zendesk and Google Analytics) – you can also use Geckoboard to create dashboards that visualize data from multiple accounts within the same data source.  

That means you can build a custom dashboard that gives you all the information you need in a single glance. 

And the best part is that Geckoboard auto refreshes its data sources in real-time, so you know your metrics will always be up to date. 

Let’s explore how you can build your own multi-data source dashboard. 

Step 1: Sign up to Geckoboard and connect your HubSpot account

Head to Geckoboard to sign up for a 14-day free trial. Next, start building your dashboard selecting the HubSpot data source.

Step 2: Build a widget using HubSpot data

Now you’ve connected HubSpot, you can start building widgets. A widget is just a type of data visualization – you can choose numbers, line charts, leaderboard, funnels or gauges.

You can also add further context to your visualizations. For example, you might add a sales goal you are trying to reach, a comparison with a previous period. This helps the team quickly understand how to interpret the data on the dashboard.

Step 3: Connect data from multiple HubSpot accounts

When you add a widget, you’ll notice there is a dropdown at the top left hand side of the screen where you can connect additional HubSpot accounts. Just click the drop down and select Add connection.  

Step 4: Build up your dashboard by adding more widgets

Continue adding widgets until you’ve visualized all your most important data from across your different accounts. You might complete the picture by including visualizations from other data sources such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, LinkedIn, Facebook, Zendesk or Spreadsheets.

It’s easy to move, resize and group widgets using Geckoboard – it's just a case of "drag and drop".

Conclusion

And there you go. Now you can see all your HubSpot metrics in one place. No more spending all your time logging into different accounts.

There are many situations in which you might need to monitor multiple Pipedrive accounts at the same time. 

For example, you might own multiple businesses with their own, seperate Pipedrive accounts. Or you might be a technical consultant who is helping multiple businesses set up and maintain their Pipedrive platform. In this situation, it’s helpful to understand how much your clients are using the platform, to understand how well they are onboarding. 

For obvious reasons, Pipedrive’s native reporting platform isn’t designed to let you report on metrics from other accounts, meaning you can’t create reports to track metrics from different accounts.  

So if you want to avoid spending your day logging into multiple accounts or switching between admin users, you’re going to need a solution. 

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution to this reporting problem – Geckoboard. It’s going to save you a lot of time, and help you maintain an overview of all your Pipedrive data.

How to report on multiple accounts with Geckoboard 

Geckoboard is a KPI dashboard tool that helps you monitor your most important sales metrics in real-time. In addition to Pipedrive, it also connects to over 90 data sources such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Shopify, Zendesk Google Ads, Google Analytics, Facebook, Instagram and Google Sheets. 

That means you can build real-time dashboards from multiple data sources. Using our drag-and-drop dashboard creator, the whole process takes just a few minutes. 

The best part is, Geckoboard can connect to several accounts in Pipedrive, meaning you can access all your metrics all in one place. 

Step 1: Sign up to Geckoboard and connect your Pipedrive account

Head to Geckoboard to sign up for a free trial (you don’t need to enter any credit card details). Next, start building your dashboard selecting the Pipedrive data source.

Step 2: Build a widget using Pipedrive data

Now you’ve connected Pipedrive, you can start building widgets. A widget is just a type of data visualization – you can choose numbers, line charts, leaderboard, funnels or gauges.

You can also add further context to your visualizations. For example, you might add a sales goal you are trying to reach, a comparison with a previous period. This helps the team quickly understand how to interpret the data on the dashboard.

Step 3: Connect data from multiple Pipedrive accounts

When you add a widget, you’ll notice there is a dropdown at the top left hand side of the screen, here you can connect additional Pipedrive accounts. Just click the drop down and select Add connection.  

Step 4: Build up your dashboard by adding more widgets

Continue adding widgets until you’ve visualized all your most important data from across your different accounts. You might complete the picture by including visualizations from other data sources such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook or Spreadsheets.

It’s easy to move, resize and group widgets using Geckoboard – it's just a case of "drag and drop". And if you want to change the color scheme, just click on the customize menu to create a custom theme like the one we’ve created below. 

Conclusion

And there you go. Now you can see all your Pipedrive metrics in one place. No more spending all your time logging into different accounts.

Sales is a naturally competitive role that attracts people with a competitive spirit. If you run a sales team, you’ll likely find there are times when you need to inject that extra boost of competition into your team culture. A sales contest or competition is often the best way to harness your team’s enthusiasm for victory with healthy team rivalry. 

In this article, we’ll explore when might be a good time to run successful sales contests. We’ll also give you some ideas for sales competitions you can run in your team today. 

When should I run a sales competition?

Sales contests can be particularly useful if: 

• Morale is low, and you want to give people a boost (especially during an economic downturn)
• You’ve launched a new product or service, and you want quickly to get as much traction as possible 
• It’s your peak sales season, and you want to make the most of every opportunity

Every sales professional – from the bright-eyed, optimistic rookie, to the grizzled, lone-wolf veteran – can occasionally use a boost of motivation to improve their performance. Like anyone, even seasoned sales professionals can experience career lulls. Sales competitions are a great way to get your people out of a rut. 

Remember not to exclude your most senior, highest performing, or even junior salespeople from these contests. Instead, you should hold various sales competitions (like the ones described in the next section of this article) which allow everyone to take part – and win! Not just the top earners. 

11 sales contest ideas and examples

Chances are, you already have incentives like commissions or bonus plans. A good sales contest shouldn’t only focus on the top sellers. Use your sales performance incentive fund (SPIF) to create a contest that everyone can win based on their strengths and contributions to your team’s overall success. There are other important metrics your sales competitors can track and reward. 

Here are some sales contest categories for sales managers to consider, along with some guidance on how you can run them in your business:

1. Customer retention or winback – It’s well known that acquiring new customers is more costly and challenging than retaining existing ones. This means recurring customer revenue is the company's lifeblood. A Forbes article reports that customers often need to subscribe to a product for between one and five years before contributing profit to the company. It makes sense that salespeople responsible for the most renewals deserve recognition and reward, making them feel appreciated and acknowledged for their efforts.
   
   If you're considering a Customer Retention or Winback contest, you can set up Renewal Rate and Winback dashboards in your CRM platform like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Pipedrive to track the effectiveness of account managers in nurturing customer relationships and preventing contract churn.   
   
2. Freshman or Newbie of the Year – I recently worked for a company that recognized promising first-year salespeople who may not have the highest closed revenue numbers. Still, they demonstrated they could generate opportunities, win the trust of partners and prospects, and close a respectable amount of business along the way. The Trailblazer of the Year prize was highly coveted by newcomers. A separate “Rookie Leaderboard” can help track progress here. 
   
   Rewarding top new hires based on a combination of sales KPIs like CRM activity statistics, pipeline volume, and lead response times might be your best bet for this sales contest, especially if your products and services have long sales cycles. 
   
3. Top case study earner or positive customer review generator – Success stories and positive reviews are valuable social proof for companies across all industries. Customer video testimonials, success story one-pagers, and reviews on websites like Capterra, G2 and GetApp are powerful sales enablement resources. Gaining enough trust and loyalty to convince a client to go public with praise for your business can pay dividends for years to come. You’d be surprised how happy most marketers are for a chance to speak with customers. Especially ones like me who used to be sales reps themselves.   
   
   Sales reps can earn points or digital badges for each customer review or testimonial they obtain, with additional bonuses for high-quality or video testimonials. You can determine how many points a review should rank vs testimonials and written case studies. 
   
4. Top Upseller and Cross-Seller – Your most experienced salespeople have likely figured out the best ways to increase the value of deals, by selling add-ons like premium support, consulting and training services. Running a sales competition based on successful deal value upgrades will shine the spotlight on seasoned salespeople, and set an example for others. 
   
   Create a sales leaderboard that is connected to your CRM and tracks how many deals include professional services, add-on modules, or even top-tier subscriptions. Celebrate your reps who go the extra mile to increase deal margins and revenue.   
   
5. Most Resilient or Most Improved – Everyone loves a comeback story or a tale of someone who faced great adversity but succeeded anyway. Have you noticed the performance of some of your core salespeople has taken an unexpected turn? Coach them to uncover why their performance is lagging and reward them when they get back on track. When economic or competitive factors threaten your deals, rewarding reps who persevere and find ways to win deals can be a great motivator for all. 
   
   Let’s say one of your mid-to-top-tier sales reps had a rough quarter (or two) but rallied to hit quota late in the year. Rewarding their tenacity based on quarter-over-quarter CRM data is a great way to motivate others to persevere when every deal matters.  
   
6. Most Productive Salesperson – Some salespeople are hunters chasing down big deals, and others are farmers who keep existing customers happy and often sell add-ons or value-added services. You can track the achievements of these team members with digital badges or virtual trophies as they pass performance milestones.
   
   Building relationships, meeting customers, building pipeline and presenting solutions require lots of time and energy. Even if a sales rep isn’t the top seller in a quarter, they may be destined for a great one down the line. If you reward the effort behind the results, it helps your team focus on hunting for orders instead of waiting for bluebirds to drop in their laps. 
   
7. SalesOps Awards – For many companies, getting a sales order from a customer is only the beginning of processing a transaction and recognizing the revenue. Ensuring contract terms (like payment and shipping terms) are acceptable and pricing approvals are in place can often tie up deals at quarter or year-end. Rewarding salespeople for consistently bringing in audit-worthy business with healthy margins is another great way to reward good behavior and encourage continuous improvement. 
   
8. Buzzword Bingo – Salespeople are always encouraged to listen to prospects and customers actively and not to use jargon or acronyms in case they might be confusing. Motivate your sellers to listen to customers attentively by having them check boxes whenever a customer uses keywords during conversations, especially words that signal they see the value in your products and services, and a deal may be on the horizon. 
   
9. Raffles – Randomly rewarding your sales team with raffle tickets for a job well done (like closing a deal over a certain clip level, earning a positive customer review, or being an asset to the team) is a great way to boost morale. 
   
   Awarding a virtual trophy or ticket every time someone goes above and beyond can build suspense up until a weekly or monthly draw can build your team’s appetite for greater rewards for bigger contests. 
   
10. Team-Based Contests – Individual competitions and prizes are one way to promote healthy competition, though pitting groups against each other is a great way to foster relationships and shake things up. It might help new hires get into the winners’ circle and build a taste for victory. 
    
    Depending on the size of your sales team, it could make sense to run a “Team A vs Team B” contest once in a while. I remember a sales contest like this we held for a software company I worked for, where each team had a couple of senior account executives, a few sales development reps, a customer success manager, and a premium support rep. The shared victory helped multiple territories and lines of business to meet their numbers instead of limiting the success and celebration to one or two. 
    
11. Team Mate or Mentor of the Year – Recognize the members of your team who go above and beyond by helping their peers with proven tricks of the trade or even helping out on sales calls. This kind of recognition demonstrates you recognize signs of leadership and may motivate team members to aspire to a career path within your company. You can track peer nominations quarterly or annually on a shared dashboard. 
    
    Many companies have peer appreciation programs with small tokens of appreciation awarded to those who support their colleagues. Set up an Airtable form to collect nominations, and then track their peer awards throughout the year to recognize those who realize there’s “No I in Team.” 
    

The power of sales gamification

Sales contests are great motivators, and go beyond traditional sales commissions or bonuses that are usually paid monthly, quarterly, or annually. They also create friendly competition between your team and incentivize reps to increase their activity level and strive for customer satisfaction. I remember the excitement I felt when I was getting close to qualifying for a President’s Club trip. 

Psychological benefits of sales contests include:

• A sense of accomplishment and recognition for the winning or top-performing reps
• Social connections between teammates can emerge from the competition. 
• Reduced stress can result when work feels less like a grind and more like a competition.
• Increased focus and skill retention—Make tools like sales playbooks, competitive battlecards, or performance dashboards an integral part of the contest. If these resources help your sellers succeed in the contest, they’ll learn to make them part of their regular arsenal. 
• Improved feelings of engagement and pride for continuously improving in many sales 
• It can be challenging to shift motivation into a higher gear. Sales contests can remind your team what it’s like to perform at their peak and return to their winning ways.  

Sales reps often admit they are “coin-operated,” meaning monetary rewards are high on their priority list. Others are more motivated by merchandise prizes, executive recognition, or experiences like travel or outings for their family. 

Use dashboards for TV or desktop

A custom, real-time KPI dashboard can bring your sales contest to life by displaying competition metrics and rankings. By embedding the dashboard into the tools you use (such as Slack) or displaying it on a TV on the office wall, you will ensure that the contest is constantly top of mind. 

This is also a great introduction to the power of performance dashboards in your everyday sales. Helping reps become more aware of their KPIs helps them focus on improving them.  

With Geckoboard, you can build a KPI dashboard to support your contest in minutes. It integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, spreadsheets and over 90 different data sources. 

Implementing gamification and competitions: Best practices

Before you start your next sales contest, make sure you: 

• Have fair and transparent competition rules in place. Integrate your competition dashboard with trusted data sources like your SaaS CRM app to minimize any doubt that the results are authentic. It helps to keep dashboards updated with real-time data.
• Encouraging team participation and feedback. Don’t assume what motivates your team; ask them what incentives would drive them to increase their activity levels and focus on generating better outcomes. 

I worked in business development for a company whose motto was Management by Measurement, which was integral to their business practices. Deciding on your team’s most important performance metrics and ensuring they are trending in the right direction is crucial to your company’s growth.  

Ready to make sales team competitions part of your sales culture?

Helping your sales team compete in healthy ways within your company can help you identify your peak performers and those who need coaching or mentoring. Sales commissions and bonuses are a powerful performance motivator. Yet many sales professionals of all experience and skill levels need a boost of adrenaline now and then to keep their motivation and activity levels high.  

Supercharge your sales team’s motivation and performance. Start planning a series of sales competitions to track and reward your sales team and make them feel valued and driven. For more information about Geckoboard sales competition dashboards, visit our dashboard examples page.

Any sales team that uses HubSpot will know the CRM produces lots of useful metrics and KPIs. You may want to make the most out of this data by using it to power a custom KPI dashboard, in order to keep your team informed and motivated. 

Although it’s possible to build custom dashboards within HubSpot itself, there are many instances where you will need a third-party data visualization tool to produce your dashboard. 

For example:

• You want to visualize you HubSpot metrics alongside data from other sources, like Google Analytics, Zendesk, Aircall, or spreadsheets
• You want want to customize your dashboard design (in a way that isn’t possible in HubSpot)
• You want to make your dashboard easier to share or display on screens. 

Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) is a popular go-to solution for many people in this situation. Not least because it’s well known as a free tool, which offers good levels of customization. 

The main drawback to using Hubspot with Looker Studio is that neither Looker nor HubSpot have built a native integration to connect the two platforms. You will therefore need to use a third-party connector tool. 

This comes with one or more of the following downsides:

• Cost
• Limited refresh rates
• Manual setup and maintenance. 

In this article we’ll explore some of the common connector tools. However, before we do…

Geckoboard: an alternative to Looker studio

For those who aren’t interested in the hassle that comes from using third-party data connectors, you may consider a purpose-built solution like Geckoboard, instead. 

Geckoboard is an alternative to Looker Studio, which has a pre-built integration with HubSpot, as well as over 90 other data sources including Google Sheets, Zendesk and Google Analytics. 

So if you want a fast, reliable way of building real-time dashboards powered by multiple data sources (including HubSpot) then Geckoboard really is the solution for you. 

Just connect HubSpot in a couple of clicks, then use our drag-and-drop dashboard builder to design your dashboard. In a few minutes, you’ll have a dashboard that looks like this: 

It’s easy to share, is optimized for TV display, and all our integrations have the fastest possible real-time refresh rates, regardless of your plan. Pro plans start at $79/mo.

Connecting HubSpot to Looker Studio: 3 options

If you’re still set on using Looker Studio, here are some common ways you can connect your HubSpot data.   

Option 1: Looker Studio Integration (Datawarehouse.io)

If you search for Looker Studio in the HubSpot App Marketplace, you may come across an app that appears like a native integration, built by Looker Studio. However, you should be aware that, despite its name and branding, it’s actually produced by a third party company called datawarehouse.io

Sneaky...

This app will automatically connect your Hubspot data to Looker Studio, however the main downside is the cost, particularly if you want to use your dashboard for real-time monitoring. That’s because the price starts at $119/mo for a daily refresh rate, rising to $499/mo for a 15-minute refresh rate.    

Option 2: Supermetrics

Supermetrics specializes in connecting data from online tools to data warehouses like BigQuery, or BI tools like Power BI. It also has a HubSpot integration that will allow you connect your data to Looker Studio. 

The main downside with Supermetrics is the price and the refresh rate, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. 

If you only want to connect HubSpot, then you could purchase the essential plan for €37/mo then buy a HubSpot add-on for an additional €37/mo (€74/mo total). 

However, the essential plan only refreshes your data once a week, meaning its not a workable solution if you want to monitor your KPIs more regularly. 

For daily refresh rates, the core plan (with a HubSpot add-on) would come to €236/mo.

For faster than daily refresh rates, you would need to pay €899/mo for the enterprise plan. 

Option 3: Google Sheets

If you really are on a budget, then don’t fear, there is a way to connect your HubSpot data to Looker Studio for free. However, as we’ll discover, it will require much more time investment to set up and maintain, which may prove to be a false economy. 

HubSpot’s Google Sheets integration is built by HubSpot itself and is completely free. 

Once you have installed the app, you can schedule exports of your HubSpot data to Google Sheets using workflows in HubSpot. From here you can use Looker studio to visualize the data. 

The first thing to bear in mind is that using Google Sheets as a go-between is not a straightforward process. It’s not only time-consuming, but by choosing a manual process like this you’re also increasing the risk of bugs. A small mistake in your setup could lead to you calculating the wrong metric. This is not ideal if you want your dashboard to be the single source of truth. 

Furthermore, if you need to edit your dashboard in Looker Studio, (you want to visualize different metrics for example), then you may need to change your whole workflow and export settings every single time you make an edit. This, again, takes time and increases the risks of bugs and mistakes. 

Finally, this is not a good solution if you want your dashboard to visualize data from other data sources, such as Zendesk or Aircall.

We would only really recommend this option if you are planning on building a relatively simple dashboard, which you don’t need to edit. 

HubSpot is one of the most popular CRM tools available for sales teams today. Not least, because it both simplifies and automates the sales management process, so teams can focus on what they do best – selling. 

In this article, we’re going to explore another way you can use HubSpot to make your team more productive – connecting HubSpot to Slack. 

Integrating HubSpot and Slack will enhance your team communication by allowing real-time updates and notifications directly in Slack channels.

So how do you connect HubSpot with Slack? 

Depending on your needs, there are three common ways.

1. HubSpot’s Slack integration
2. Geckoboard 
3. Zapier

1: HubSpot’s Slack Integration 

The HubSpot team have built a powerful integration for Slack which helps teams seamlessly work across both platforms. 

You can set up the integration by simply searching for Slack in the HubSpot App Marketplace, or by visiting this page.

Useful features

The Slack integration has many different features and use cases, here are some of our favorites: 

Real-Time Notifications: Receive instant Slack notifications for important HubSpot activities, such as new leads, deal updates, or task assignments, ensuring teams stay updated without checking the CRM constantly.

Deal and Lead Updates: Automatically share updates on deal progress and lead interactions in designated Slack channels, helping the entire team stay aligned and informed.

Task Automation: Automate reminders for follow-ups, meetings, or important sales milestones in Slack, keeping teams organized and ensuring tasks are completed on time.

Easy Data Sharing: Share HubSpot data directly within Slack conversations, allowing teams to quickly discuss leads, deals, or customer service issues without leaving the chat interface.

Command Shortcuts: Use HubSpot commands in Slack to quickly search contacts, create tasks, or pull up deal details, saving time and improving productivity by reducing the need to switch between platforms.

Limitations

Depending on your needs, the app does have some limitations. 

Dashboard snapshots. It’s possible to share your native HubSpot dashboards via the Slack app, however you cannot schedule these (you have to manually share each time) and when you do, the app only posts a link to the dashboard, not a snapshot of the dashboard. 

It will look something like this: 

If you’ve built dashboards in HubSpot, you may have envisaged some way of automatically posting those dashboards into your Slack channels for maximum visibility. But this is not possible via HubSpot's Slack app. 

For this, you might instead consider Geckoboard. 

Goal notifications. If you set goals for your sales team, it’s always good to communicate when these have been hit. Although it is possible to create alerts that notify you in Slack when goals have been achieved, it’s not possible to do this across all plans. For example, setting goals for activity metrics (such as calls and emails) is only available on the Sales Hub Enterprise plan and above.    

2: Geckoboard

Geckoboard is a no-code KPI dashboard tool, which anyone can use to build real-time HubSpot dashboards in a matter of minutes. 

As well as being able to customize your HubSpot data, you can also visualize metrics from other tools such as Zendesk, Aircall and Google Analytics. 

That means you can create real-time HubSpot dashboards which look like this:

Using Geckoboard’s Slack integration

Connecting Geckoboard to Slack can be a high-impact way of getting your team to take better notice of their KPIs. 

Slack Snapshots

You can set up regular, automated snapshots of your dashboard to be sent to Slack channels (or email) at a time of your choosing. The best part is that the automation displays the full dashboard visual in Slack, so everyone can access the information on the dashboard, there and then. It looks like this:

This is great for keeping the wider team and colleagues aware of performance and progress, even if they don’t regularly access the HubSpot platform, or even have a HubSpot account themselves. 

Alerts and Notifications

With Geckoboard, you can also set alerts which automatically notify you in Slack when one of your metrics goes above or below a set threshold. 

This is simple to set up, and is available across all metrics, including activity metrics. It’s a great way of keeping your team on top of important data, and also drawing attention to reps who have exceeded their targets. 

Try Geckoboard

If you want to build your own custom HubSpot dashboards, you can try Geckoboard for free for 14 days. 

3: Zapier

What article about connecting SaaS tools would be complete without referencing Zapier. If you ever want to create a Slack automation, then for many, Zapier is the first tool they will consider. 

Here are a few type of automations you can set up for HubSpot and Slack using Zapier.

New Lead Alerts in Slack: Automatically send a Slack notification whenever a new lead is added in HubSpot. This keeps your sales team informed in real time and allows for immediate follow-up without having to manually check HubSpot.

Deal Stage Updates: Set up a Zap to notify a specific Slack channel whenever a deal moves to a new stage in HubSpot. This keeps everyone on the team aligned and aware of progress or potential bottlenecks.

New Task Creation Reminders: Automate Slack reminders when a new task is created in HubSpot. This ensures that team members don’t miss crucial follow-ups or activities and can act promptly on assigned tasks.

Form Submission Notifications: When a contact submits a form on your website through HubSpot, Zapier can send an immediate Slack message to notify your team. This helps ensure faster response times for customer inquiries or lead generation.

HubSpot is one of the most popular CRM tools on the planet – especially for small and medium-sized businesses who are trying to scale. 

One of the benefits of HubSpot is the amount of useful sales data it generates. So, it may have occurred to you that if you can make this data more visible or accessible, it will keep your team focused and motivated. 

A TV dashboard or wallboard can have a powerful effect on a sales team. By displaying your key sales metrics in a prominent space, your team will become more aware of their KPIs, and more responsive to important changes.

In this article, we’ll walk you through, step-by-step, how to set up a TV dashboard for HubSpot Sales. 

Benefits of a TV dashboard for HubSpot

A TV dashboard can have many benefits for a sales team:

• Important changes (such as Deals Created, Win Rate, or changes to the pipeline) are spotted quickly, so you can take early action.
• Sales reps become more familiar with KPIs, including how their numbers change over time.
• Goals and targets become an important part of your team's culture.
• Other parts in your company (including the management team) have better access to performance metrics, without needing to use the Hubspot platform.

Why can’t you directly display HubSpot on a TV?

In this article, we’ll show you how to use Geckoboard to create a custom dashboard that can be displayed on a TV. However, you may ask yourself: wouldn’t it be easier to just connect a TV to a browser, where I can already view HubSpot reports?

It’s a good question, but there are several reasons why it’s not practical to display HubSpot reports on a TV:

• HubSpot isn’t visually optimized for TV display. For example, in order to access all the data, you would need to click and scroll.
• It wouldn’t necessarily display live data, not without manually refreshing your reports.
• You can’t display HubSpot data alongside metrics from other sources such as Google Sheets, Aircall, Shopify or Zendesk.

Building a TV dashboard for HubSpot sales

To display HubSpot data on a TV, you will need to use a third-party dashboard tool.

It’s important to ensure your dashboard software is optimized for TV display, meaning it can be displayed in full screen, does not require interaction, can be understood at a distance, can be displayed indefinitely, and can be updated remotely.

Fortunately, Geckoboard is designed to meet all of these requirements.

Step 1: Signup to Geckoboard

Sign up for a 14-day free trial, (you don’t need to enter any credit card details).

Step 2: Connect your HubSpot account

To start, click ‘add widget’ then select HubSpot.

Choose any of the widgets to get started, then log in to HubSpot to create your connection to Geckoboard.

Step 3: Add a widget to your dashboard

Once you’ve established a connection to your HubSpot account, you can start creating visualizations, which we call ‘widgets’ – these include numbers, bar charts, line charts, and leaderboards. That means you can display anything from deals, revenue, or leaderboards that show team performance.

You can give further context to widgets by including goals, comparisons, and status indicators. This helps the people looking at your dashboard to understand the significance of the metrics being they’re seeing – so they know if they are good, bad, typical, or unusual.

Step 4: Build up your dashboard by adding more widgets

Once you’ve built your first widget, you can easily build up a dashboard that shows your sales team’s most important data and KPIs.

You can drag, group or resize widgets how you want them. We recommend that you put your most important metrics in the top left hand corner so they are the first thing your audience sees.

Your aim is that your dashboard is easy to read and understand, at a glance.

Step 5: Choose the right hardware

In order to display your Pipedrive dashboard on a TV, you will need:

• A TV screen – any HD TV should work. You can also use a computer monitor but these are normally smaller and more expensive.
• A small computer (one that can run a modern browser like Firefox or Chrome). Smaller is often better because it can be stored discreetly behind the TV. We recommend a PC stick or Raspberry Pi, which are generally inexpensive.
• A HDMI lead or similar connection.

We’ve put together a guide to help you choose the right TV dashboard hardware here. This includes why we don’t recommend using a Smart TV, Amazon Firestick or casting device to power your TV dashboard.

Step 6: Setting up your hardware

Once you have your hardware, it’s time to set it up.

Position your TVThink about who needs to view the dashboard and how easy it will be for them to see it from where they work.

Kiosk modeWe’d recommend you set up your computer device in kiosk mode. Kiosk mode configures the device so that it runs a single application when it’s turned on, effectively meaning it will always open on your dashboard, every time the device is booted up.

We’ve created some step by step guides to setting up Windows devices and Raspberry Pi in Kiosk mode.

Step 7: Connect your dashboard to your TV

Using a different computer, log in to Geckoboard, select ‘Send to TV’ and follow the instructions.

Here you can manage your TV connections, connect a screen using a short URL and passcode, and even choose several dashboards to be displayed on a loop.

We hope you found this guide useful. Click here to start your free trial with Geckoboard and create dashboards for Pipedrive and over 90 other different data sources.

Any Sales Director worth their salt knows you need to be on top of your numbers. And if you want your sales team to be successful, you need them to be on top of their numbers too. 

For many, the single best way of achieving this is with a sales dashboard. A sales dashboard gives you and your team a single view of your most important metrics – so you can access them at a glance. 

Sales dashboards take the friction out of communicating KPIs, and make it more likely that your team uses data as a source of motivation, personal accountability and decision-making. 

How to choose a sales dashboard tool?

Unfortunately, choosing the right dashboard software for your needs is not a straightforward task. There’s a lot of different options out there.

After all, a sales dashboard setup could be as low-tech as using a sharpie to write your key numbers on a whiteboard. At the other end of the spectrum, you may consider more complex Business Intelligence tools such as Tableau. You may also consider spreadsheets, in-built analytics tools, KPI dashboard tools, and everything in between. 

If you want to find a solution that works (without needing to become an expert in the dashboard software market) then this article is for you. 

With the help of our Dashboard Decider framework, we’ll give you a no-nonsense way to choose a dashboard tool that will give your people everything they need to be data-driven selling machines.

Wait, you’re Geckoboard. You make dashboard software. Why should I trust you?

Oh, hi there, Imaginary Voice of the Reader, that is a good question.

Yes, Geckoboard makes KPI dashboards, and we’ve done so for over a decade. Which is why we know that no single dashboard solution will work for every team. 

I predict around 10% of the people reading this article will be a good fit for Geckoboard. If that’s you, then hopefully you’ll give us a try. However, if you’re in the 90% of people better suited to a different solution, then hopefully this article will help narrow down your choices. 

(Either way, we have no interest in attracting customers who aren’t going to be a good fit for our product in the long-run!)

Dashboard Decider Framework

If you’re assessing whether or not a dashboard software will be the right fit for you, you can save yourself a lot of time and effort with our Dashboard Decider. This is a simple framework that reduces your decision on five key criteria  – Data, Design, Specialism, Sharing and Budget.

Some of these areas, such as budget, will already be at the forefront of your mind. But the importance of others are less immediately obvious. 

If you want a solution that will work for you in the long run, you need to make sure the software delivers against your needs in all five areas. 

Data

Where is your data, and how will you connect it to your dashboard tool? 

Here you need to identify where your KPIs are generated – in a single platform like Salesforce, or across multiple tools?

If they’re generated in a single platform, it’s possible (but not certain) that native reporting features (such as Salesforce Reports) will be sufficient for your needs. If your data is generated in multiple places, you will likely need a tool to pull everything together. 

You will also need to work out how often you need your data to refresh, and whether or not this process can be automated.

Design

Can you design a dashboard that can be understood at a glance?

A well-designed dashboard tells you what you need to know – at a glance. Your team uses it because it’s useful, and is the easiest way to access the information they need. Whereas badly designed dashboards are rarely used or adopted.

The more advanced the dashboard software, the more design flexibility you will have. But beware, more flexibility doesn't always equal better dashboards. If you’re using a more complex tool like Looker or Tableau, you will need someone who is skilled at information design.

Also, if you plan on permanently displaying your dashboard on a TV screen, you should be aware that some tools (such as spreadsheets) are not optimized for TV display. 

Specialism

Can you set it up yourself or will you need a data specialist? 

Some dashboard tools will require specialist teams to set up and maintain. For example, a BI tool like Power BI usually works in conjunction with a data warehouse. Setting up and maintaining the data warehouse will require a data specialist who knows SQL (a coding language for databases). 

Sharing

Is your audience likely to see your dashboard continuously?

Your sales dashboard will only work if your team can access it regularly, without any friction. Ideally, you should think about how you ‘broadcast’ your dashboard in the spaces your team spends the most time. Whether that’s in a physical office where you can display your dashboard on a TV screen, or virtually, where you might embed your dashboard into tools like Notion and Slack. 

If you’re expecting your audience to remember to check the dashboard, then keep in mind that tools with even light barriers to access, such as logins, drastically reduce the likelihood of widespread usage and adoption. 

Budget

Is the final price clear, and does it fit your budget? 

Most dashboard software has some form of scaled pricing, based on your usage. That might include per-user pricing, or additional charges for real-time data refresh, or extra data sources.

No doubt, you will have a budget in mind. Just beware these hidden pricing tactics.

Using the Dashboard Decider to assess your options 

Next we’re going to use the five areas of the guide to assess some common options for sales dashboards. (But you can use the Dashboard Decider framework for every tool you’re assessing.) 

• Google Sheets
• Tableau
• And, of course, Geckoboard.

Google Sheets

A simple KPI dashboard option for any sales team on a budget. Let’s run it through the 5 key criteria. 

• Data: The biggest drawback of Google Sheets, or any spreadsheet, is that you're going to need to update your numbers manually. That might be fine if you’re using it as a weekly reporting tool, but anything more regular is going to be unworkable. 
• Design: Google Sheets does give you a lot of design flexibility. It’s a fair option for simple tables and visualizations – it’s functional, but not particularly polished. 
• Specialism: Turning a spreadsheet into a dashboard does require a bit of thought and planning, but it’s well within the specialism of your average Joe.  
• Sharing: Google sheets is very easy to share, but much more difficult to ‘broadcast’. Not a suitable option if you want to display your dashboard on a TV, for example. 
• Budget: Free. 

Tableau

The market-leading BI tool, and one of the first brands to come to mind when people think about ‘dashboards’. However, you will soon learn that Tableau is only really accessible to large companies with data specialists. 

• Data: To use Tableau (or any BI tool), you will first need to create a data warehouse, then establish a connection with the data sources where your KPIs are generated. Because BI tools are generally used for longer term analysis and reporting, not all data warehouses support real-time refresh rates.
• Design: Very comprehensive visualization options. However, to create effective dashboards, you will almost definitely need someone with information design experience. 
• Sharing: Includes shareable dashboards, and dashboards that can be optimized for TV display. The main barrier to access is per-user licensing, which can become expensive. 
• Specialism: The setup and maintenance of the data warehouse means you will certainly need a team of data specialists who can code. 
• Budget: You will need to factor the cost of the data warehouse as well as Tableau, which has a per-user pricing system, which can quickly scale.

Geckoboard

Unlike BI tools, Geckoboard is accessible to small and medium sized businesses who don’t have data specialists. Your biggest drawback is likely to be whether or not we support the data sources you require. Geckoboard is also not a good fit if you are planning to also use your dashboard for data analysis. (Geckoboard designed for KPI visibility, not advanced data analysis.)  

• Data: Connects directly to 90+ data sources like Salesforce, Aircall and Pipedrive (with no data warehouse required). It will also refresh your data at the fastest possible rate, regardless of which plan you’re on. 
• Design: You will notice the visualization options are more limited than, say, Tableau (or even Google Sheets). This is a feature not a bug. Geckoboard is designed with effectiveness in mind. It’s possible for anyone to create a professional looking, visually effective dashboard, without design experience. That’s why we don’t include visualization-types which are more likely to confuse your audience than inform them (such as pie charts and area charts).
• Sharing: Built with Sharing in mind. You can easily create sharing links, set up regular snapshots for email and Slack, and display your dashboard permanently on a TV. 
• Specialism:  No specialism required. 
• Budget: Geckoboard’s subscriptions start at $39 and the vast majority of our customers pay less than $199 per month.

If you work in a fast-paced business, it’s not hard to see why real-time analytics might be valuable. Being able to analyze live (or near-live) data can help you and your team react faster, and make more informed decisions in the moment.  

Setting up analytics and reporting systems always has the potential to cause a headache – this is especially true when it comes to working with real-time data. 

What’s more, most of the guidance on this subject tends to be written for larger organizations who have access to teams of data specialists and engineers. That’s why this article will focus more on some of the ways small to medium-sized businesses (and non-specialists) can utilize real-time analytics.

Why would a business need real-time analytics?

It’s important to remember that not all analytics tasks need real-time data. For many strategic decisions, a fixed sample of recent historical data will work just fine.

But there are many operational decisions that need to be made in response to what’s happening right now. And the quality of this decision making can be radically improved with access to real-time data. These types of decisions are relevant in all areas of a company including sales, marketing, support, finance, operations and fulfillment. 

Some examples might include:

• An ecommerce business owner who has noticed incorrect orders are being shipped, and needs to get on top of the situation
• A marketing team, who’s noticed that shopping cart completions have dropped sharply, and needs to investigate why 
• A customer support manager, who has noticed a sudden increase in First Response Time, and wants to know what’s causing this. 

How to set up real-time analytics in your business

If you’re thinking about introducing real-time analytics to your business, you’ll probably want to understand some of the different approaches, rather than going all-in on a solution that might not be right for you. 

In the rest of this article, we’ll explore the pros and cons of three different approaches:

1. Using a data warehouse
2. Using native reporting tools
3. Using Geckoboard

RELATED: Choosing the best dashboard software for your business

1: Using a data warehouse

When you begin to research real-time analytics, you’ll notice that most of the guidance is geared towards the data-warehouse approach. However, this option is only realistic if you have access to data specialists and engineers who can also write SQL. 

The basic premise involves creating a setup where all your data sources import into a data warehouse (such as MySQL). You can then use a BI tool (such as Tableau) to query that data, and conduct analysis. 

To make this setup work for real-time data, you'll need to ensure that both the import of your data happens in real-time, and also that the data warehouse itself continually refreshes in real-time. 

Here are some further resources on designing the architecture for a real-time data warehouse:

• Guide to building a near-real tim data warehouse
• Oracle: Best practices for real-time data

Pros

The obvious benefit of using a data warehouse is that all of your data is in one place. This means you’ll be able to make comparisons between different data sets, and calculate metrics using data from multiple sources. This will result in a richer level of analysis. 

Cons

There are however several drawbacks to using data warehouses in this way:

• Complexity: Even for businesses with specialist functions, this is not an easy task. And for businesses without access to data specialists, this is just not a realistic solution.  
• Refresh rates: To save on costs, most data warehouses refresh once or twice a day. Increasing the refresh rate to near-real time will radically increase costs. 
• Getting data in: Depending on where your data is generated, you will need to build (or use) APIs that import data in real-time. Some of the business tools you use will make this easier than others. 

2: Using native reporting tools

By this, we mean using the native reporting features within the business tools you already use - such as Shopify, Zendesk, or Google Analytics. 

Pros

The major benefit to this approach is that a) there is no setup involved and b) reporting is usually priced into your plan. 

Cons

The downsides include: 

• Efficiency: If your data is stored across multiple platforms, it can be cumbersome and time consuming to monitor all the metrics you need to track. 
• Team access: Access to these platforms is usually managed by a select group of people in the organization. Meaning it can be hard for others to access the data they need to see, at least without paying for extra licenses or training. (Your CEO doesn’t want to have to learn how to navigate Facebook Ads.)
• Refresh rates: Not all business tools offer real-time data refresh. Zendesk Explore, for example, offers hourly or daily refresh depending on your plan. 

3: Using Geckoboard  

For many businesses, Geckoboard offers a simple, efficient way to utilize real-time analytics in the situations that matter, without needing to invest in a specialist data setup. 

Pros

Geckoboard is simple to use and set up, so it’s accessible to nearly every kind of business. You can monitor important metrics in real-time, set up notifications when they change, and use Interactive View to drill into your metrics when you need to understand why they’ve changed. 

Cons

The main downside to Geckoboard is that it’s not a BI tool, like Tableau. Although you can display data from multiple sources side by side, you can’t run advanced computations like you can with a BI tool. Think of it more as a real-time monitoring tool. 

The data refresh rate varies depending on the data source. Some integrations like Aircall update live, whereas some, such as Zendesk Support refresh every 10 minutes (which is still faster than Zendesk Explore). However, unlike some other dashboard tools, Geckoboard does not throttle refresh rates – that means the fastest possible refresh rates are available on all pricing tiers.

How does it work?

Connect Geckoboard to one or more of 90+ data sources, including Zendesk, Shopify, Aircall and Pipedrive. In a few minutes, you can set up a real-time dashboard you can use to monitor important metrics.    

What if I need to investigate a metric that has changed?

This is where Geckoboard can really save you time. Geckoboard’s newest feature, Interactive View, allows you to drill down into a metric to investigate the underlying numbers and trends. 

Say, for example, you are a Customer Support manager monitoring First Response Time, and you notice it’s been increasing, you can drill down into the metric and break it down by assignee, ticket type or channel, to understand why. 

Conclusion

Don't be drawn into thinking real-time analytics isn't for you. If you're an SME or a businesses without data specialists, you can still make use of real-time analytics. For many businesses, there are simpler options available to access the insights and KPIs you need to see.

Even though it’s sometimes seen as an enterprise-level business challenge, operational efficiency is a critical focus area for small to medium businesses (SMBs).

Operational efficiency is about your business’s ability to deliver its products or services in an optimized and cost-effective way, minimizing waste and maximizing productivity. As a small business owner navigating growth, one of your biggest priorities has to be achieving operational efficiency. When you scale your business, you'll also scale your systems, processes, and workflows. And any inefficiencies in those systems will only multiply as you grow.

For example, let's say you have one salesperson who has to manually enter data from sales calls. That manual data entry might seem manageable for just one person. However, if you plan to quickly grow your sales team to 10 or 50 people, that same manual process suddenly represents thousands of dollars of lost productivity.

The opposite is also true — if you can streamline and automate processes like data entry now while still a smaller business, those efficiencies will be amplified as you grow. That’s why achieving operational efficiency from the start is vital. Otherwise, you risk implementing costly time and productivity drains that'll just keep getting worse as your business expands according to your growth plans.

While there are a lot of general resources out there about how to improve operational efficiency, one of the most common and painful sources of poor operational efficiency lies in your approach to data management. Whether it’s important customer data stuck in an endless array of Google Sheets or slow manual reporting processes, how you deal with data in your startup phase isn’t going to help make your operations efficient and scalable for future growth. 

In this blog post, we'll explore the telltale signs and underlying problems of how your approach to data could be holding your business back and provide practical solutions to help you break down silos and gain a holistic view of your operations.

Signs your approach to data is hurting operational efficiency

As we’ve established, operational efficiency is not a "nice-to-have" but a necessity for SMBs to thrive and stay ahead of the curve, as it directly impacts resources, competitiveness, productivity, decision-making, and long-term sustainability. 

When your business scales quickly, the old ways you used to track and manage information just don't cut it anymore. The amount of data you're dealing with increases dramatically — think about how many more customer records, invoices, inventory logs, etc., you’ll have compared to when you were just starting out. 

Suddenly, the simple spreadsheet or basic software you once relied on can't efficiently handle all the new complexity and information it’s receiving. 

Do any of these situations sound painfully familiar?:

• You have a shared cloud or drive filled with customer data you can never seem to locate when needed, or worse, it’s outdated or incorrect 
• Multiple employees spend hours every week re-entering the same data into different systems that don't sync
• You're constantly having to dig through a ton of Google Sheets and databases to pull basic reports
• Customer orders or inquiries are falling through the cracks because key information gets lost 

If any of those processes or scenarios sound familiar to you, it’s probably time to take a closer look at how your approach to data might be hurting your operational efficiency.

Sign #1: Manual data input and reporting

One of the most obvious signs of an inefficient approach to data management is the reliance on manual data input and reporting processes. If your team is still manually entering data into spreadsheets, databases, or apps, you're wasting huge amounts of time on tedious, error-prone work. As you grow, what may have been manageable with a small amount of data becomes unsustainable as that volume increases.

On the reporting and analysis side, continuing to export data and build reports in Excel or PowerPoint manually is also incredibly inefficient at scale - especially if you need daily or weekly reports. However, not all reporting necessarily needs to be automated. For example, if it's a high-stakes quarterly report that you’re going to share with investors, putting time into manually reviewing the data to perfect the narrative and ensure your data is correct might be the best approach. 

But for more routine reporting (weekly team updates, KPI status, etc.), a manual process is definitely an unnecessary time-waster. Those processes should be automated as much as possible.

The right balance is automating anything that is recurring, high-volume, and doesn't require a lot of analysis while leaving room for manual processes for any mission-critical or customized reporting when needed.

Solution: Automate data entry and reporting:

• Use form builders like Google Forms or Microsoft Forms to create easy data entry forms that feed directly into spreadsheets.
• Leverage tools like Zapier or Microsoft Power Automate to automate data transfers between different apps and systems.
• Set up data validation rules in your spreadsheets to minimize errors during manual entry.
• Explore tools like KPI dashboards that can automate reports from your data sources.

How to Display Excel Spreadsheets on a TV Screen

We explore the best way to display Excel spreadsheets on a TV, so you can broadcast your KPIs to your team via a dashboard display.

Geckoboard blogDale Pearson

Sign #2: Different sources of truth

As your business grows, different teams may start using their own terminologies, data sources, or definitions of metrics. This can lead to what’s known as different ‘sources of truth’ for the same metrics. Let’s say an e-commerce company has teams across sales, inventory, and marketing, each maintaining its own data sources that report on total sales revenue. However, because they have different data sources (and even ways of measuring sales revenue), this can lead to a major issue in the business. 

When there’s no single source of truth where your most important data lives, terminologies for similar metrics, or different ways of calculating results about vital metrics, it often results in conflicting information, miscommunication, and ineffective decision-making.

Solution: Eliminate different sources of truth:

• As a team, audit where discrepancies exist and dig into the reasons. See if you have instances where your teams are calculating the same (or similar) metrics differently by different systems or methods. 
• Where those metrics are different, agree to call them different things. For example, distinguish between "signup" for a new free trial user versus "subscriber" for someone who converts to a paid plan. Avoid ambiguous terms like "conversion" that could get misconstrued between teams. 
• Once you understand the underlying causes, agree on standard definitions and methodologies to use company-wide going forward.
• Designate specific sources as the "source of truth" for each important metric. Clearly document and communicate these sources in an easy-to-access place for the entire team. 
• Use centralized KPI dashboards to provide transparency into key metrics and where they are sourced from. 

What is a KPI Dashboard? | No-nonsense Guide & Examples

A KPI dashboard is a visual display of metrics and other information that helps you monitor your business performance at a glance.

Geckoboard blogDale Pearson

Sign #3: Broken and slow feedback loops

Operational efficiency relies on continuous feedback loops, where insights from one area of the business or team will inform decisions and processes in another, keeping your business agile and adaptive. However, when data is hard to access, and ways of communicating the status of your goals are slow and reliant on incorrect data, these feedback loops break down, hindering collaboration and stopping progress.

For example, let's say your product team develops a new feature, but getting customer usage and sentiment data from customer support is a long, drawn-out process. By the time they finally get the feedback, opportunities to quickly iterate or double down on the successful improvements have already been missed.

When insights and data are shared slowly across a business, teams get out of sync, and collaboration suffers. The end result? Your business loses its ability to be agile and adapt processes quickly based on continual feedback loops.

Solution: Fix slow, broken feedback loops:

• Use tools like a dedicated KPI dashboard solution to create interactive dashboards and reports. Share these dashboards with relevant teams, enabling data-driven discussions and feedback based on real-time insights.
• Try tools like Trello, Asana, or ClickUp to create shared project boards and tasks.
• Use collaboration tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat to create dedicated channels for cross-functional discussions and data sharing.
• Encourage teams to share updates, insights, and data-driven decisions in these channels, fostering real-time communication and feedback. Even better, share real-time insights daily through these channels to make sure your teams are aligned. 

Sign #4: Lack of real-time visibility

Without a clear and accessible approach to data management, it becomes hard to gain real-time visibility into your business's performance. Relying on outdated or inaccurate data from manual spreadsheets, for example, can lead to missed opportunities, delayed responses to market changes, and poor allocation of resources.

Solution: Improve real-time visibility of data:

• Make sure you have automated data refreshes set up to ensure your dashboards or reports reflect the latest information - if you’re not using a dashboard tool, this might require additional add-ons or tools like data connectors or APIs that can feed live data into your visualization tools. 
• Set up alert systems or notifications to highlight critical changes or deviations from your goals.
• Provide mobile access to your dashboards and reports for on-the-go visibility.

Conclusion 

Improving your approach to data management is crucial for SMBs who want to improve operational efficiency and drive sustainable growth. Ultimately, the goal should be to make data open, accessible, and visible in real-time across your organization. When everyone, from leadership to junior employees, has access to the latest performance metrics and operational data, they are empowered to quickly identify and solve issues and make swift and informed business decisions. 

By addressing these underlying problems around your approach to data and trying out some of these practical solutions, you'll be well on your way to breaking down communication silos, improving operational efficiency, and positioning your small business for continued, healthy growth.

If you want to establish a data-driven culture in your business and track your progress with clear and actionable KPI dashboards, subscribe to our monthly newsletter below for expert guidance on setting goals, metrics, and interpreting data. 

Google Sheets is well-known for its sharing and collaboration features. 

However, there are many times when you might need to share some of the data in your workbook, whilst keeping other parts of the workbook private (including any underlying data and formulae). 

In this article, we’ll explore three methods you can use to share a limited selection of spreadsheet data with end users (including sharing a single tab) – safely and professionally.

Why would you need to share only part of a Google Sheets spreadsheet?

There are many reasons why you might need share some – but not all – of your spreadsheet:

• You want to share high-level financial KPIs with colleagues, without giving access to sensitive underlying data – salaries, for example.
• You want to give investors and stakeholders an insight into your business performance. In particular, you want to focus their attention on the metrics that matter. Whereas sharing underlying numbers can lead to misunderstandings and distractions.   
• You want to give clients a high-level insight into your performance, project progress, or other metrics, such as budget utilization. 
• You want to share KPIs with contractors, but want to limit their access to commercially-sensitive company information and files.

If you have the time, you might consider sending your end users a regular, fixed report – every month, for example. However, this is not a good solution if you want your end users to have continuous real-time access to the data in Google Sheets.

Therefore, this article will explore three methods where your end users will receive continuous access to the data you’ve selected. 

Can I share a single Google Sheets tab?

The first thing to note is that it is not possible to share a single tab from a Google Sheets workbook without giving users access to the entire workbook. 

Instead, you’ll need to use an alternative method to achieve the same result. We’ll explain three approaches in detail:

1. Using the IMPORTRANGE function – a quick-fix solution (which is sometimes limited by refresh issues) 
2. Using a KPI dashboard tool – best solution for reliable, professional data sharing
3. Sharing data via a TV dashboard – best solution for physical spaces 

1: Using the IMPORTRANGE function to replicate a single tab in a new sheet

This is a simple solution which involves creating a new Google Sheets workbook, then using the IMPORTRANGE function to recreate part of your original worksheet. This works by referencing the data in the original workbook.

Step 1

Open your original workbook. For the sake of ease, make sure that all the data you want to share is located on a single tab.

Then create a completely new workbook.

Step 2

In your new workbook, in the first cell, insert the following formula:

=IMPORTRANGE(“URL”,“SheetName!A:Z”)

Replace URL with the sharing URL from your original workbook. 

Replace SheetName with the name of the tab you want to replicate in this new workbook. (Make sure to keep the exclamation mark! and "quotation marks")

Note: pasting the formula directly can sometimes produce a Formula Parse Error. The resolve this, just type in =IMPORTRANGE , select the function, then enter the rest of the formula.

Step 3

Next, select 'allow access' and your new workbook will reference data from the original workbook. 

Step 4

Invite people to the new workbook. Be sure to give them viewer access, so they aren’t able to break or edit the formula. (Remember, if they can edit the formula, theoretically, they will also be able to pull other tabs from the original workbook).     

Drawbacks of the IMPORTRANGE function

The major drawback of IMPORTRANGE method is that your workbook will

• only refresh every hour  
• and will only refresh when your original workbook is open.   

That means if you update your original workbook, you will need to keep the file open, to make sure that your new workbook also updates. That also means if you update your original workbook, then immediately close it, the new workbook will not update. 

In practice, you might find that this is not the most reliable solution for giving your users access to up-to-date data. 

2: Using a KPI dashboard tool

Geckoboard is KPI dashboard tool trusted by thousands of customers who need an easy way to share Google Sheets data with their colleagues and stakeholders. 

By using Geckoboard, you can create real-time KPI dashboards to visualize data in Google Sheets. You can then provide view-only access for the people you want to see the dashboard, or alternatively, you can create a sharing link which can be accessed from anywhere.  

Unlike the IMPORTRANGE method, Geckoboard will continuously and reliably refresh your data (between every 0-3 minutes). 

Not to mention, it's a more visually appealing, and professional way of sharing data with stakeholders, especially clients or investors.

Step 1

Signup to Geckoboard for a free 14-day trial. There’s no credit card required. If you choose to use the product after your trial, subscriptions start at $39 per month. 

Step 2

Connect Google Sheets, by connecting to Google Drive, then select your spreadsheet. 

Step 3

Next we’re going to build our first widget, which is just a term for individual data visualizations.

Select the cells you want to visualise.

Choose your visualization type, here you can fine-tune how you want to visualize the data.

Then add it to your dashboard.

The widget on your dashboard will always stay up to date, based on the data in your worksheet, refreshing between every 0-3 minutes. 

Step 4

Continue building widgets to complete your dashboard. You can rename widgets, group them, and resize them to create a professional looking dashboard design.

Step 5

Select 'Share', then either invite view-only users to view your dashboard, or create a sharing link, which they can access from anywhere. 

90+ data sources

As well as Google Sheets, Geckoboard integrates with over 90 data sources such as Salesforce, Zendesk and Google Analytics. That means it’s possible to create a dashboard that visualizes real-time data from multiple sources. 

This may also be an attractive option if the data in Google sheets is actually pulled from one of these business tools. Effectively, you may be able to automate your reporting process by using Geckoboard to visualize live data directly from the tools you already use. 

3: Sharing data via a TV dashboard

If you want to share data with your end users, but don’t want to give them access to any files whatsoever, you might consider using a TV dashboard. As well as being a highly effective, highly visible way of communicating data in physical spaces, it also minimizes the chance your spreadsheet files end up in the wrong place. 

By using Geckoboard’s Send to TV feature, you can manage your screens and loops of dashboards remotely. 

Read the complete guide to TV dashboards.

For many, Excel spreadsheets are a no-nonsense way to keep track of your business KPIs. Whether you want to track company revenue, sales team performance or key marketing indicators, Excel is the go-to tool for many business leaders who want a simple way of monitoring the metrics that matter. 

However, you may have noticed that Excel is not the most effective way of getting your team to take notice of your KPIs. Even if the spreadsheet is regularly updated, it doesn’t mean your team is making a habit out of checking it.

This isn't great if you’re trying to build a data-driven culture, where everyone is aware of their performance metrics, and is laser-focused on hitting their goals. 

That’s why many team leaders seek to turn their Excel KPI spreadsheets into an office wallboard. A wallboard (or TV dashboard) is a TV that permanently displays performance metrics, so your colleagues become aware of them, and check them regularly throughout the day. 

If this sounds like you then read on to find out more about the solutions available.

Displaying Excel data on a TV screen directly

Displaying your Excel spreadsheet on a TV screen feels like it should be a straightforward task. After all, we’ve all shared documents to a TV screen during a presentation or a meeting. 

You may expect that displaying your spreadsheet is as simple as connecting your screen to a computer via a HDMI lead. However, in practice, there are two major stumbling blocks:

1. Permanent display

Ideally you need a solution set up for permanent display. That means not setting up the screen every time you come to the office. (Screencasting or other similar screen sharing options are therefore out of the question.)

Even if you dedicate a laptop (connected to a screen via a HDMI lead) you will still need to continually access the laptop to update the spreadsheet or refresh the data. In reality, maintaining your wallboard becomes a constant chore, (which is unlikely to stick).

2. Visual comprehension

Most Excel spreadsheets and dashboards are not optimized to be displayed on a big screen. If your display is hard to read at a distance (or at a glance), then people aren’t going to get the information they need and it’s not going to be effective. 

(Not to mention, it just doesn’t look very professional. If you’re someone who takes data seriously – you deserve a solution that makes you look like the modern, data-driven business you are.)

Instead, the best solution is a KPI dashboard tool

Instead of directly broadcasting your spreadsheet, consider using Geckoboard – a KPI dashboard tool that’s powered by the data in your spreadsheet. 

By connecting your Excel spreadsheet to Geckoboard, you can quickly build a KPI dashboard that visualizes your most important metrics. There are multiple reasons why this is a better solution:

• Your dashboard will be optimized for full screen TV display, meaning it can be easily read and understood at a distance. (It also looks more polished and professional.) 
• You can set up your device in kiosk mode, meaning your dashboard will always display when you power-on in the morning. 
• By establishing real-time connection, your dashboard will update whenever you update the data in your spreadsheet. 
• You can manage your dashboard (or loops of dashboards) remotely from the Geckoboard app.
• Geckoboard also integrates with over 90 other data sources such as Salesforce and Google Analytics, meaning you can include other metrics in your dashboard directly from the tools you use.  

The cost

Geckoboard does carry a cost, starting at $39 per month. For some, this may be offputting. However, many Geckoboard customers find this cost to be more than worth it because of

• The time they save, otherwise spent manually sharing spreadsheets
• The increased level of engagement their team has with data and KPIs, which leads to a greater sense of accountability and motivation.  

It has made a huge impact on our sales and our team’s psychology. They can see how far away they are from their targets – if they’re only a few percent off, there’s a big drive to hit them on time.
— Vaughn Newton - Dymatec

Display excel spreadsheets on a TV screen

Try Geckoboard for free and build your first Excel-powered KPI dashboard in minutes.

For further information on using Geckoboard as a TV dashboard, check out our Complete Guide to TV Dashboards.

Victor Figueroa, Farmers Insurance Agency Owner, was building out a sales call center when he realized his old whiteboard wasn’t quite up to the task. He tells us how switching to a real-time TV dashboard has ignited a competitive fire in his sales team.

At the end of summer 2023, Victor had the chance to scale up his office space. He wanted to take this opportunity to expand not only the floor plan of his new office but also the way his team worked. Up until now, his sales team was working within monday.com to update their numbers. 

They had a small whiteboard in the office that Victor would update manually to let everyone know how they performed. 

“My goal was to build a call center style environment and everything was coming out perfectly, but I didn't want to go back to the traditional whiteboard. I didn’t want to manually update the numbers, I wanted the look of the stock exchange, I wanted our data on a TV!  We needed real-time data to keep track of our production.”

Because Victor’s sales team uses monday.com, it was his natural instinct to try to build a dashboard within the tool. Though he knew monday.com was a powerful tool, he couldn't find a way to leverage it in the way he wanted — to build an easy-to-view, professional TV dashboard.

“monday just didn’t have the clear sales visualizations I was looking for. I wanted something that would take over a whole TV screen. It feels like monday dashboards were designed for an executive to see how their team is performing and were meant to be viewed on a computer screen.”

Victor tried getting his data on a screen using Excel but again hit the issue of real-time data. As his team uses monday to control their workflow, they needed something that would connect with it and provide fast feedback loops for his sales team.

After more searching for the right tool, Victor found Geckoboard. 

“Geckoboard did really make it very, very easy to get set up. So when it integrated with Monday and I started noticing that every 10 minutes it would update our monday data – it solved my problem. And it actually looks nicer than monday and Excel.”

Once Victor had built his dashboard in Geckoboard, he got it up and running on a screen in his new call center. That’s when he started to see the significant impact that real-time data can have on a competitive sales team.

“Just having that displayed and the staff being able to see where they stand at all times, it’s huge. In the sales world, people need to know where they stand against the person next to them. It's become a very good investment because it just keeps the competitiveness going and the sales fire burning in the office. It’s a good fire to have if you want to be sales-driven.”

By giving up his whiteboard and implementing a real-time TV dashboard, Victor motivated his sales team and created a competitive fire that’s been crucial to their growth and success.

Victor’s team still uses that old whiteboard by the way, only now it’s used for calendar updates and information that’s a lot less impactful than important sales production numbers.

Want to replace your sales whiteboard with a professional sales TV dashboard? Try Geckoboard for free for 14 days.

For many years now, monday.com has been a much-loved task management tool. Monday.com makes it easy to organize your team’s workflow, and stay on top of your deadlines. It also has some excellent dashboard tools you can use to track your teams progress and pull out different metrics and KPIs. 

However, if you’ve ever tried to display your monday.com dashboards on an office wallboard, you’ll know that these dashboards aren’t built with permanent TV display in mind. For this, you will need a specialist dashboard tool like Geckoboard. 

This is especially the case if you want to create KPI dashboards that display monday.com data alongside data from other business tools like Salesforce, Zendesk and Google Analytics.  

In this article, we’ll explore step-by-step, how to setup a TV dashboard using your monday.com data.   

What are the benefits of displaying monday.com data on a TV?

There are many reasons why you need to display monday.com data via a TV wallboard, where everyone can see it.  

• Data-driven culture: Exposing your people to performance KPIs helps them gain a deeper understanding of how the team works, and how KPIs contribute to goals.      
• Unblock workflows: make sure the entire team is in the loop when tasks are stuck, overdue or unassigned, so everyone can rally around and resolve blockers.  
• Friendly competition: visualizing output metrics helps to motivate people, keeping the whole team accountable and focused on the metrics that matter.

Step-by step: Building a TV dashboard for monday.com

Geckoboard is the perfect TV dashboard solution because it:

• connects to monday.com, and supports real-time data refresh 
• connects to other data sources you might want to display such as Salesforce, Zendesk and Shopify.
• is optimized for TV - this means it can indefinitely be displayed in full screen, can be understood at a distance, and can be updated remotely.

Step 1: Sign up to Geckoboard

You’ll have full access to Geckoboard’s features for your 14-day free trial – there are no credit details required.

Step 2: Connect monday.com

To begin, select ‘add widget’ then choose monday.com.

You can select any of the widget options to get started, then follow the instructions to connect Geckoboard to your monday account.

Step 3: Create a widget

Now you’ve connected your account, you can start building widgets. (A widget is a data visualization: such as a line chart, a leaderboard, a gauge or a number.)

You can choose to change the visualization type or make your widget even more useful by adding goals and status indicators. This helps your team better understand if a metric is good or bad, or if they need to take action.

Step 4: Complete your dashboard 

Next build up your dashboard by adding more widgets. You can connect other data sources to create a KPI dashboard that displays metrics from different areas of your business. In this dashboard, we’ve included metrics from Google Analytics, Instagram, Mailchimp and Shopify.  

Step 5: Select the right hardware for your TV dashboard

In order to display your monday.com dashboard on a TV, you’re going to need the following hardware:

• A TV – any HD TV screen should work. You could also use a computer monitor but these are likely to be smaller and more expensive.
• A small computer – this is going to be more reliable than using a smart TV. By choosing a small computer it makes it easy to store the device discreetly behind the TV. We recommend a PC stick or Raspberry Pi, which are small and inexpensive.
• A HDMI lead to connect your screen to your computer.

Why not check out our complete guide to selecting the best TV dashboard hardware. (This includes why we don’t recommend using a Smart TV, Amazon Firestick or casting device for your TV dashboard.)

Step 6: Setting up your TV dashboard

Once you have your hardware, you can set up your TV dashboard.

Position your TV

You should think about the position of your dashboard and who needs to view it. They should be able to read it easily (at a glance) from where they are working.

Kiosk mode

We recommend you set up your device in kiosk mode. Kiosk mode configures the computer device so that it runs a single application when it’s turned on – this basically means it’s always going to open up on your dashboard, every time the device boots up.

We’ve created some step by step guides to setting up Windows devices and Raspberry Pi in Kiosk mode.

Step 7: Connect Geckoboard

Using a different computer, log in to Geckoboard and select ‘Send to TV’. here you can pair your TV to your dashboard.

This is where you can manage different TV connections, connect a screen using a short URL and passcode, and even choose several dashboards to be displayed on a loop.

We hope you found this guide useful. Click here to start your free trial with Geckoboard and create dashboards for monday.com and over 90 other different data sources.