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Salesforce is a leading customer relationship management (CRM) solution, one that drives sales and marketing professionals to get the insights they need to make informed decisions. In fact, Salesforce dashboards consistently empower business users to make the most of the sales and marketing data at their disposal. 

How Do Salesforce Dashboards Work? 

Salesforce dashboards display relevant sales and marketing data in a reader-friendly format. That way, business professionals can use these dashboards to understand the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, find out how a business' sales figures stack up and much more. 

Each Salesforce dashboard serves as a visual display of key metrics and trends for records in a business. There is a 1:1 relationship in each dashboard, which means a single dashboard displays a single portion of data. However, business users can consolidate multiple dashboards on a single dashboard page layout, thus creating a powerful display of assorted business insights. 

The use of multiple dashboards in combination with one another is exceedingly important for sales and marketing professionals. Thanks to Salesforce, business users can assess sales performance, customer support and other pertinent business data at the same time. As a result, business users can use Salesforce dashboards to make informed decisions faster than ever before. 

Are Salesforce Dashboards and Reports the Same Thing? 

Although there are similarities between Salesforce dashboards and reports, it is important to note there are many significant differences between the two. 

Sales and marketing professionals can access Salesforce dashboards on any device, from any location, at any time. Simply log in to Salesforce, and a business user can access state-of-the-art dashboards instantly. 

On the other hand, Salesforce reports are generated from information that is contained within dashboards. Typically, a business user will need to establish fields and records that are available for use when creating a report. Also, a report only will display the criteria defined by the business user. 

Salesforce today offers many report templates that sales and marketing professionals can use to simplify the reporting process. Or, business users can take advantage of custom reporting capabilities to set up unique reports on their own. In either scenario, business users can produce reports that include the same information contained within dashboards. 

Which Is Better: Salesforce Dashboards or Reports? 

For many sales and marketing professionals, nothing beats the insights provided by Salesforce dashboards, and perhaps it is easy to understand why. 

Salesforce dashboards offer many benefits, including: 

• Advanced Business Overview: Salesforce dashboards provide an at-a-glance overview of sales, marketing and other departments. It ensures business professionals won’t have to commit substantial time and resources to search for pertinent insights and can get the information they need to find out how a company is performing at a particular time.
• Instant Insights: Dashboards provide up-to-the-minute information. This ensures business professionals can see what’s happening with a company and tailor their sales and marketing efforts accordingly.
• Simple to Use: Business professionals at all levels of a company can reap the benefits of Salesforce dashboards. Managers can teach employees how to access Salesforce, create dashboards and share these dashboards with peers, ensuring workers across a company can drive meaningful business improvements.

Let's not forget about the benefits of Salesforce reports, either. 

Salesforce reports enable business professionals to access sales and marketing insights on the go. The reports offer some value to sales and marketing professionals because they allow business users to review comprehensive insights from any location – with or without an internet-enabled device. 

But if there was a way to access Salesforce dashboards – regardless of whether an internet connection was available. At PolyVista, we're working to make this dream a reality. 

The PolyVista team is committed to helping marketing and sales professionals fully benefit from Salesforce. In the next few weeks, we will introduce a revolutionary service to complement the Salesforce dashboards and reports that many sales and marketing professionals currently use. 

Our service, dashboard in a file, enables Salesforce users to access Salesforce dashboards in convenient interactive PDF (iPDF) reports. Dashboard in a file is easy to use and available for free, making it simple for business users to review anywhere, anytime access to Salesforce dashboards. 

Want to learn more about dashboard in a file? Stay tuned for updates.