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We Asked 100 Retail Executives: Dashboards or Insights? The Answer Surprised Us

3 min read

Feb 12, 2026 4:48:57 PM

For years, dashboards have been the backbone of retail decision-making. Sales performance, inventory turns, footfall, conversion rates all neatly visualised, all just a glance away.

But as retail grows more complex, we wanted to understand one thing:

Are dashboards still enough for today’s retail leaders?

So we asked 100 retail executives across merchandising, operations, and strategy teams a simple question:

If you had to choose between dashboards or insights, which one actually helps you make better decisions?

The answer surprised us.

Dashboards Are Everywhere But Confidence Is Not

Nearly all executives we spoke with said dashboards are deeply embedded in their organisations. This mirrors industry data showing dashboards are now a standard layer of modern business intelligence systems, especially in retail operations and performance tracking.

Dashboards excel at answering questions like:

What were yesterday’s sales?
Which stores underperformed?
Where did inventory spike or drop?

But when we asked how confident leaders felt making decisions based purely on dashboards, enthusiasm dropped sharply.

More than 70% said dashboards help them see what happened but not why it happened or what to do next.

Industry discussions also highlight that dashboards often evolve into static reporting tools rather than engines for decision-making as data volume and complexity increase

Photo: Yan Krukau: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-group-of-business-partner-looking-at-a-graph-print-out-7693707/

The Insight Gap: Where Retail Decisions Slow Down

Executives consistently described the same friction points:

Too many metrics, not enough meaning
Insights trapped inside analyst workflows
Decisions delayed while teams “interpret the dashboard”
Opportunities identified after revenue is already lost

This “data-rich but insight-poor” gap has been widely documented, where organizations collect vast amounts of data but struggle to translate it into timely, actionable understanding.

In retail, this gap is costly. Customer behaviour shifts quickly. Promotions have short windows. Supply chain disruptions require immediate response.

Seeing data late or acting late is no longer acceptable.

Why Retail Is Quietly Moving Beyond Dashboards

Retail analytics trends show a clear evolution: companies are moving from descriptive analytics (what happened) toward diagnostic and predictive insights (why it happened and what may happen next).

AI-driven analytics and augmented intelligence are accelerating this shift, helping retailers uncover patterns, correlations, and opportunities that are not obvious in traditional dashboards .

But adoption is uneven.

Many retailers still rely on dashboards as the final output even though decision-makers increasingly expect context, prioritisation, and clarity, not just charts.

As one executive put it during our conversations:

“We don’t need more dashboards. We need fewer questions after looking at them.”

Dashboards vs. Insights: It’s Not Either-Or

Importantly, executives weren’t calling for dashboards to disappear.

Instead, they described dashboards as the starting point, not the destination.

Dashboards provide visibility.
Insights provide direction.

The winning organisations are not choosing between the two but they are layering intelligence on top of visibility, so decisions happen faster, with greater confidence, and closer to real business impact.

This approach aligns with how leading enterprises are rethinking analytics: embedding insights directly into decision flows rather than leaving interpretation to manual analysis cycles.

What Retail Leaders Are Really Asking For

Across all interviews, four expectations surfaced repeatedly:

Clarity over complexity: fewer metrics, more meaning
Speed: insights delivered while decisions still matter
Context: understanding causes, not just outcomes
Actionability: knowing what deserves attention now

Photo: Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/exited-ethnic-waitress-working-with-cash-desk-in-cozy-cafeteria-4473496/

This marks a fundamental shift in how analytics success is defined in retail.

It’s no longer about how good the dashboard looks.
It’s about how quickly teams can move from data to decision.

The Quiet Shift Happening Now

Our survey revealed something subtle but important:

Retail leaders are not publicly abandoning dashboards, but they are privately outgrowing them. The most competitive teams are already asking a different question:

How do we turn data into decisions without slowing the business down?

And that question is shaping the next generation of retail analytics.

One retailer faced this exact challenge and found a way to turn insights into real decisions. We’ll share the full case study showing how it happened and why it matters for retail teams, in the next post.