Dashboards have been quite a topic of contention in certain circles with the recent recirculation of Taylor Brownlow’s essay ”Are Dashboards Dead?”.

While I’m of the opinion that no, dashboards are not dead, they have been undeniably overused and often misunderstood, with a disconnect between a dashboard’s actual function versus our perceived function of them. 

Why is there dashboard fatigue?

Many of us have experienced dashboard fatigue, and rightfully so. As businesses, how many dashboards have we commissioned that were never fully utilised, if used at all? The answer is too many.

The reason for low engagement isn’t the fault of the humble dashboard, but rather that a dashboard was never the appropriate solution for the end user, or its design wasn’t tailored enough to the business use case.  

When faced with a business problem requiring data insights, we often jump straight to dashboard creation. However, there are many other solutions that can be tailored to deliver data insights, such as concise reports and static presentations. With an increased understanding of where dashboards fail, the conversation has shifted to questioning their relevance altogether.  

So, what place do dashboards still have in businesses, and how can we better understand where they excel to drive improved outcomes? 

What potential challenges may arise with dashboards?

There are many instances where dashboards may be less effective or complicate matters for businesses, and other methods provide a better solution. Instances may include: 

• When the user needs a concise answer to a question:
  Dashboards require interaction and exploration, which can be time-consuming. If a stakeholder needs a straightforward answer, a tailored report is more efficient.  
• For business specific, niche questions:
  Not every level of enquiry warrants the resource-intensive creation of a dashboard. For narrow, targeted questions, simpler reporting methods suffice. 
• One-time insights:
  Dashboards are overkill for static data projects, such as measuring the success of a single transformation. In these cases, producing a well-crafted report or presentation is more resource-efficient. 
• If the data is exported for analysis:
  If users regularly export dashboard data to manipulate it elsewhere, it’s a sign that the dashboard doesn’t meet their needs or wasn’t necessary to begin with. 

When might dashboards be the right solution?

Company-wide reporting platforms

Dashboards provide a unified view of performance across teams, offering consistent delivery of insights to aiding faster decision making, customisable filters for views specific to each business unit, efficiency in distributing insights without the need for manual reporting and increased data accessibility through data visualisation. 

Regular cadence reporting

For tracking ongoing metrics such as daily sales, customer trends or campaign performance, and measuring progress against targets, dashboards provide updated insights without the wait. 

Exploratory analysis

Whenusers want to discover patterns, relationships or unknown trends within the data, dashboards allow for interactive interrogation. These tools are especially valuable for data-savvy end users, enabling self-service exploration without requiring an analyst’s intervention. 

Monitoring ongoing initiatives

Dashboards are excellent for tracking live projects or recurring business processes, offering real-time visibility into performance. 

The future approach for dashboards

With the above in mind, we’re moving to a more informed approach where dashboards are no longer a tiresome, default solution, but a carefully considered tool.

The future isn’t about abandoning dashboards, but about being intentional and strategic in their creation and deployment. The key is facilitating dashboard creation in a way that adds tangible value and is thoughtfully configured to provide meaningful, actionable insights that empower decision making. 

How CACI can help

At CACI, we work with you to deliver the best solutions for your analysis needs. Our extensive experience in successfully implementing dashboards across diverse industries highlights several key scenarios where dashboards have proven to be highly effective.  

Whether it’s creating a bespoke, one-off report or developing a suite of comprehensive, customisable dashboards, contact us to find out more about how our user centric approach and industry expertise can help you gain meaningful analytics that will drive strategic business outcomes. 

During a recent visit home, my family and I took a trip into Liverpool. As part of the day out, I had a wander around Liverpool ONE and— as feels mandatory for anyone who visits— popped into Liverpool ONE’s new-and-improved Zara store.

The elevated Zara is markedly an easier shop— more spacious, easy to navigate and more aesthetically appealing— transforming it into a showroom-style experience. While I didn’t purchase anything at the time, it did make me consider how a change in store format might inspire additional spend.

How a physical Zara store influences online spending

This updated Zara experience in Liverpool ONE isn’t just a boost for in- store shopping, its presence also inspires a substantial increase in online purchases too. Prior to the renovations, the store already contributed to a 25% increase in online sales locally. Zara now offers a hybrid shopping experience which inspires more customers to shop online, creating a blend of online and offline shopping.

The new-and-improved  store has further embraced hybrid technology to bridge the gap between physical and digital shopping, with innovative features like Store Mode. With Store Mode, shoppers can check real-time stock on the app or website, or even order items for same-day pickup in-store.

Other tech-focused improvements combat the infamous queues, including RFID trackers for quicker item processing in changing rooms, self-service kiosks and online booking for changing rooms. These features are a welcome upgrade that not only improve the in-store experience, but also provide a smoother transition between online and physical shopping.

Assessing the broader impact of in-store experiences

To understand the full impact of Zara’s presence, it’s essential to consider more than just in-store sales. Recent data from CACI’s “Voice of the Nation” survey reveals that a positive in-store experience can drive 36% more purchases, with a showroom-style layout adding another 19%. However, this effect varies by demographic— younger shoppers are drawn to interactive showroom features, while older customers respond positively to an overall pleasant in-store environment. 

For landlords, recognising the broader value of physical retail spaces is key. The halo effect of a well-designed store can enhance a brand’s online sales significantly, but this impact depends on factors such as the store’s type, location and shopper demographic. For example, a city centre location can drive 13pp more online spending for fashion retailers than a similar store in a Regional Mall. For a store generating £1 million in revenue, this difference could equate to £130,000 in additional online sales. 

How can CACI help?

As consumer behaviours shift towards a blended online and offline shopping experience, it is important that both landlords and tenants can quantify the online halo to understand the true value of a store in influencing online spend. 

CACI can quantify the online halo for over 41 million combinations of shoppers, locations and asset types, helping brands to maximise their retail impact. Further insight into the online halo will be shared in our upcoming blog series that will explore how and why major cities demonstrate the strongest online halo impact and the overall effect on sales, how the halo impact increases by the number of locations with overlapping catchments, the interlinking of the online halo with target demographics, and impact of proximity on outlet store versus concept store performance. 

Discover how the online halo can support your business strategies for the future, contact us today! 

In our previous blog in this two-part series, we uncovered why France would be a good option for a Gymshark European market expansion and key considerations the brand could take for a successful expansion. Today, we’ll assess which Klepierre retail centres in these high-potential French cities would benefit most from housing a Gymshark in their centre as part of a hypothetical Gymshark French market expansion.

How Retail Footprint Europe could help Klepierre understand which retail centres would benefit from a Gymshark store

While there are many centres in France that would be suitable to bring Gymshark into based on the best shopper profile correlation in a hypothetical Gymshark market expansion, Retail Footprint Europe, CACI’s machine learning catchment model defining catchments for thousands of destinations, has helped determine three particular Klepierre centres that would ultimately become a good fit. With key Gymshark shoppers comprising Affluent Singles & Couples, Affluent Young Families, Middle Income Singles and Student Life profiles from Acorn, CACI’s geodemographic segmentation, these insights were cross-referenced against Retail Footprint Europe insights to equip the business with granular insights and tangible actions to help landlords deduce which centres would work and why.

Finally, to gain insight into actual footfall and compare actual versus expected footfall against these Gymshark profiles and conclude which centres presented opportunities to attract more of Gymshark’s core shoppers, Mobility Data was leveraged.

Saint-Lazare Klepierre in Paris

According to our findings, one of the Klepierre centres that would benefit most from the presence of a Gymshark would be the Saint-Lazare in the Haussmann-Opera retail area. This centre is expected to attract the highest potential of Gymshark’s core shoppers at 43%. Saint-Lazare also has the most affluent profile at an expected 34%. However, the area is home to lower levels of Student Life profiles, with just 1% expected to visit the centre.

Paris houses a strong proportion of premium retailers that align with Gymshark’s offering, with this particular Klepierre centre featuring a blend of competitors and complementary retailers, already housing the likes of Adidas and Nike, which both have similar offerings to Gymshark. Its shopper demographic also lends itself to those who are likely to either be existing Gymshark customers or will become ones once the brand enters the physical market.

Retail Footprint Europe insights for Saint-Lazare Klepierre

The Haussman-Opera retail area holds the third largest clothing and footwear store presence across France, with many premium and broader retailers and a higher percentage of affluent and younger consumers. Our findings also show that people travel well outside of Paris into this area to shop, making it a fantastic location to quickly grow brand reach and exposure.

Acorn insights for Saint-Lazare Klepierre

Saint-Lazare appears to perform the most in line with Gymshark’s core shoppers, with 44% originating from its expected profile according to our Mobility Data findings. This data provides insight on actual footfall and illustrates the comparison between actual and expected versus the Gymshark profile to understand if a centre had an opportunity to attract more of Gymshark’s core shoppers.

As a more premium brand, Gymshark achieves particularly high indexes for affluent consumers, but also performs well with aspiring, younger and urban consumers within the Gymshark core shopper profiles outlined by Acorn. Compared to fellow sportswear brand, Adidas, the brand has a much broader appeal and can perform in-line with their average consumers, while Gymshark performs significantly weaker in these segments.

Centre Commercial Centre Bourse Klepierre in Marseille

Retail Footprint Europe insights for Centre Commercial Centre Bourse Klepierre

Centre Commercial Centre Bourse would be a strong runner up to Paris thanks to its high-performing site in terms of its Clothing and Footwear Score and its high proportion of premium retailers that align with Gymshark’s offering, according to our Retail Footprint Europe findings. However, this centre has a rather low proportion of a young and affluent shopper demographic compared to Saint-Lazare in Paris, which could see the brand running the risk of not attracting the right shoppers upon opening.

Acorn insights for Centre Commercial Centre Bourse Klepierre

Another defining factor behind Centre Commercial Centre Bourse being a suitable location for a French market expansion is due to the city’s likelihood of having the highest proportion of Affluent Young Families (15%) compared to the other locations. According to Acorn, Centre Commercial Centre Bourse in particular attracts 36% of Gymshark’s core shoppers.

Mobility Data insights for Centre Commercial Centre Bourse Klepierre

Marseille sees a 14pp higher proportion of footfall from Gymshark’s shoppers than expected, driven by the centre attracting significantly more Affluent Singles and Couples than expected, according to Mobility Data findings. Centre Commercial Centre Bourse highly reflects Gymshark’s core shoppers (both in expected and actual footfall) and has strong proportions across the different core shopper groups, while Paris is much more concentrated on a singular Affluent group.

This centre ranks 9th out of over 10,000 retail centres for its Clothing & Footwear Score and has a strong premium retail score, even higher than that of Paris. Marseille also only has one competitor in its centre, meaning the addition of another sportswear brand wouldn’t saturate the market, but shows there is demand for this category in the area.

Les Passages Pasteur Klepierre in Besancon

Retail Footprint Europe insights for Les Passages Pasteur Klepierre

Surprisingly, despite this smaller size of this city and inevitably lesser likelihood of Gymshark opening here, it is actually home to a high level of one of Gymshark’s core shopper demographics, Student Life, as seen in our Retail Footprint Europe data. As with Centre Commercial Centre Bourse in Marseilles, Les Passages Pasteur has a strong Clothing and Footwear offering, a substantial percentage of which are classed as premium retail. While Besancon doesn’t have any direct competitor or complimentary brands, this could be navigated with the help of clever marketing strategies.

Acorn insights for Les Passages Pasteur Klepierre

Les Passages Pasteur has a much younger profile that comprises 31% of Gymshark’s core shoppers, with 12% of its catchment expected to be Student Life, based on findings from Acorn. Unlike Centre Commercial Centre Bourse, Les Passages Pasteur has a high percentage of young and affluent shoppers (even higher than Paris), which would ensure that Gymshark was opening to a shopper demographic most likely to shop with the brand. However, the city has the least affluent profile out of the three.

Mobility Data insights for Les Passages Pasteur Klepierre

Les Passages Pasteur appears to attract the most significant amount of Gymshark’s shoppers in real footfall, with 53% of its actual footfall being from Gymshark core shoppers, as seen in our Mobility Data findings. This is because the centre is significantly over-achieving in attracting Student Life (+21pp versus expectation), showing the centre resonates very well with younger shoppers.

Using the data, which Klepierre centre would best perform in France?

With the aforementioned data to consider, the strongest contender for a successful French market expansion for Gymshark would likely come from Centre Commercial Centre Bourse Klepierre. This is due to its strong representation of Gymshark’s core shoppers, both in expected and actual footfall, as well as the proportions across the different core shopper groups compared to the other two cities and centres being more concentrated on a singular group (e.g. Affluent groups in Paris and Student Life in Besancon). With only one competitor in the Centre Commercial Centre Bourse Klepierre, the addition of another sportswear brand won’t oversaturate the market. Instead, it’d reiterate the demand for this category in the area.

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With insights from Retail Footprint Europe, pinpoint the best locations for your brand’s growth across Europe.