The Brief
A small-business advisory client needed a way to identify lending patterns across the SBA 504 program, which lenders were active in which regions, what industries were getting funded, and how loan sizes were trending year over year. The source data was a sprawling public dataset, exported as flat files with messy joins and inconsistent column types.
Approach
I started by treating the dashboard as a product, not a report. That meant five clear questions it had to answer at a glance, then everything else hidden behind drill-down. The five questions:
- Which states are getting the most 504 funding right now?
- Which industries are driving that funding?
- Which Certified Development Companies (CDCs) are the most active in each state?
- How are average loan sizes trending year over year?
- What does the lender concentration look like in each region?
The Stack
What I Built
Five linked pages: an overview, a regional map, an industry breakdown, a CDC lender view, and a year-over-year trends page. Every chart respects the same global filter set so a user can scope to a single state or NAICS code and the entire dashboard reflows.
Outcome
The client now uses the dashboard during weekly strategy calls to identify under-served markets and reach out to active CDCs in specific NAICS codes. Two months in, it had directly contributed to three signed engagements they say wouldn't have happened with the old spreadsheet workflow.