Most of the Dashboard software companies tell the businesses that Business executives can develop their own Dashboards or they can un earth the patterns in the data with out any IT help. In less than 5% of scenarios, this may be true.
Part of the problem is, not all end users have the skills to understand the data what organizations have, the format in which its coming in, the blending / joining methods to use to relate datasets. Here things don’t go according to their expectation and they give up or end up loosing more time or cursing the product what they use.
In reality, a Software Engineer needs some training to explore and relate the tool to their past experience in reporting and analysis. We start comparing where this tool gives better performance than others, where it causes the pain compared to others, ease of use, administrative abilities and the list goes on.
So in my view, development of Dashboards should be part of any IT with in the organization (self or outsourced). Business executives can interact with in the dashboard by using filters and navigational techniques to know the stats which helps them to take better decisions. Building Dashboards based on the role and what kind of stories you can tell using those should be the key drivers to build a great one.
