Executive dashboard for tracking small business health

Clients: Public sector analysts, commercial lenders, risk managers, and investment research teams focused on U.S. small business and economic trends

UI design concept shown here represents the primary view of the dashboard. Backend ETL pipeline and automation are already implemented; full build-out underway.

The challenge

We set out to build a comprehensive executive dashboard to answer a high-level strategic question:

How is the small business economy doing?

To do this, we needed to track trends across three core areas:

  • Small business loan activity (disbursement rates, performance, trends)
  • Employment and revenue metrics for U.S. small businesses
  • State-level tax competitiveness across the country

We also aimed to automate the reporting pipeline for recurring data updates, transforming raw data from multiple public sources into clear, real-time insights.

This project was self-initiated and designed to demonstrate our full capabilities across data strategy, infrastructure automation, and executive-facing design.

The solution

We used a rapid 3-week sprint process, working end-to-end across the full analytics stack:

1. Framed key business questions to define dashboard scope and stakeholder value

2. Sourced and cleaned data from the U.S. Small Business Administration, Intuit QuickBooks, and Tax Foundation

3. Defined KPIs and structured the data model for consistency across datasets

4. Built a backend automation pipeline in Python to clean and update raw data from various sources

5. Designed and developed a front-end dashboard in Panel

6. Iterated through testing, performance optimization, and UX refinement

We created a solution that integrates three unique datasets and offers stakeholders a real-time view of small business health in the U.S., through the lens of loans, revenue/employment, and policy environment.

The deliverables

  • Fully designed executive dashboard in Panel
  • Automated backend pipeline using Python for recurring data updates
  • Integrated views for:
    • Small Business Loan Trends & Disbursement (2020–2025)
    • Small Business Employment & Revenue Trends (2020–2025)
    • State Tax Competitiveness Rankings

The outcome

Showcases how public data can be transformed into executive-ready insights

Automates a previously manual and fragmented reporting process

Offers commercial lenders and analysts a fast, reliable lens into national small business activity

Demonstrates our full capability in combining data engineering, visual storytelling, and stakeholder-first UX

Note: This case study was created in-house to demonstrate our technical and design capabilities using publicly available data.