We called them dashboards for a reason.
Borrowed from the automotive world, the term was meant to evoke clarity, speed and control—a place where key indicators were surfaced in real time to help a driver (or marketer) stay the course. Just as a car dashboard displays speed, fuel and warning lights, a marketing dashboard shows traffic, engagement and conversion metrics—critical data points designed for quick reads and fast decisions.
For a long time, dashboards felt like magic. They helped teams keep tabs on campaign performance, justify spend, and stay aligned. But that was before the flood of data, the speed of social, and the rise of smarter tools. Now? That same static interface often feels clunky and outdated.
Because most dashboards expect you to stop what you’re doing, dig around, and make sense of the numbers. That’s not how modern marketers work. Today’s teams move fast, juggle channels, and need insights to find them – not the other way around.
It’s time for a new name and a new model.
What marketers need now isn’t just a dashboard. They need decision engines: intelligent, responsive systems that go beyond monitoring to proactively guide, personalize and act. In this article, we’ll explore how AI is reshaping the expectations around marketing interfaces and what that means for the future of marketing operations.
The UX Gap: Dashboards Show, But Don’t Solve
Despite their intent to empower, traditional dashboards are increasingly seen as barriers rather than enablers. They’re packed with metrics but rarely give you next steps.
In fact, research shows that many dashboards go unused shortly after launch. Gartner found that only 38% of CMOs believe their dashboards help them make better decisions. And BARC reported adoption rates of around 20% for BI and dashboard tool – a sign of widespread dashboard fatigue.
Why? Because you must go to them. Log in. Click around. Try to spot patterns. And hope you’re reading the right chart. In fast-moving teams, that’s just not realistic. What was once empowering now feels like a to-do list item no one wants to do.
Even the best dashboards often fail to answer the question that matters most: “What should I do next?”
What’s Emerging Instead: The New Era of Intelligent Interfaces
AI is ushering in a new generation of marketing tools that are proactive and conversational. These tools aren’t just pretty charts, they’re like smart teammates that give you a heads-up, answer your questions, and help you move faster.
- Push, not pull: AI tools now ping you with key updates – like a campaign dipping in performance or a surge in clicks – before you even think to check.
- Conversational interfaces: Now you can just type, ‘What’s our top-performing channel this week?’ and get a clear, contextual answer without clicking through layers of filters.
- Embedded intelligence: Instead of having to log into a platform, insights now show up where you’re already working such as Slack, email or even project boards. It’s like having your analytics embedded into your day.
- Predictive and prescriptive analytics: The next generation of tools doesn’t just report what happened; they forecast what will happen and recommend what to do about it. These tools don’t just say, ‘Here’s what happened.’ They say, ‘Here’s what’s coming and here’s what you should do about it.’
“If your dashboard needs a tutorial, it’s already lost the room.”
Case in Point: How JLL Reframed its Stack – and Won
A real-world example of this shift comes from commercial real estate giant JLL. In 2023, Global CMO, Siddharth Taparia, recognized the limitations of traditional dashboards and championed the development of a proprietary large language model: JLL GPT, tailored to its business needs.
The result? Marketing operations transformed. Tasks like drafting partnership memoranda, once a 4-to-6-week process, were completed in under five hours. More than 400 marketing employees became AI adopters, integrating intelligent systems that acted more like decision engines than reporting tools.
JLL’s experience is a clear proof point: reframing your tech stack around action, not just visibility, can lead to real, measurable gains.
Actionable Insights for Marketers: Where to Start with Smarter Marketing Tech
If you’re in marketing today, chances are your time is too valuable to be chasing down numbers. You need tech that spots the trends and tells you what matters without making you dig.
Start here:
1. Audit your dashboards
- Determine which ones are routinely used to drive decisions, which ones sit idle and cut or consolidate those that don’t create value.
- According to Forrester’s 2022 State of Marketing Analytics Report, only 29% of marketers say their dashboards provide a clear line of sight to ROI, indicating many dashboards are not actionable enough to justify their upkeep.
2. Pilot an agentic tool
- Choose one AI-powered assistant, alerting system, or conversational analytics tool to test within your team. Watch how behavior shifts when insights are pushed, not pulled.
- In Gartner’s Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2023, it was predicted that by 2026, 30% of new applications will use AI to proactively recommend decisions making pilots like this essential to stay competitive.
3. Reframe vendor expectations
- Ask your software providers: “How does your platform tell me what matters and what to do next?” Prioritize tools that act like partners, not just data mirrors.
- According to The State of AI in 2023 from McKinsey, companies which embed AI in decision-making are 2.3x more likely to outperform peers in marketing effectiveness – so demand AI-driven functionality, not just dashboards with prettier charts.
4. Measure by insight-to-action ratio
- Don’t just track usage or data views. Measure how often an insight actually leads to a decision or change. That’s the real ROI of analytics.
- A Harvard Business Review study found that 72% of companies struggle to turn analytics into action – making this shift in measurement critical for real performance gains.
Dashboards had a great run. But we’ve outgrown them. In the age of AI, it’s time for tools that actually help us decide, move and ultimately win. That’s where real marketing momentum lives now.
