KPI DASHBOARD: HOW TO CREATE THE BEST ONE FOR YOUR BUSINESS

?“A performance dashboard is a practical tool to improve management effectiveness and efficiency, not just a pretty retrospective picture in an annual report.”?

― Pearl Zhu (Author of Digital Master)?

??Every Organization these days need a proper navigation device that can take them to their desired destination. Like while driving, the gauges and instruments on the dashboard display whether we are going to reach safely and on time. A Key performance indicator dashboard communicates the most vital information needed to make crucial business decisions. It helps them see insights into their business data, indicates portents, and predicts future trends and opportunities.??

KPI dashboards are looked at from two different perspectives; both are equally important to bring the best results to your business success.??

• Operational dashboard: This dashboard allows you to monitor your day-to-day operations to make sure everything runs smoothly. It displays issues and problems the moment they arise so that you can fix them immediately before it becomes too problematic. E.g., numbers of calls, average wait time, etc.?
• Strategic dashboard; however, the strategic dashboard focuses its attention on the future and identifies challenges you might face on your way to achieving your goals. E.g., Market share growth, project projections, etc.?

TOP 5 TIPS ON CURATING A KPI DASHBOARD FOR YOUR BUSINESS

In a hyperactive corporate environment, business leaders have to deal with massive amounts of data regularly. It leads to their need to organize and present relevant information in an easily understandable and visual manner that can give them a glance at their business’ operational activity. A good KPI dashboard serves to provide a quick access view to the critical indicators that allow businesses to make essential decisions in the shortest time.?

Curating a KPI dashboard requires a careful thought process, and therefore every business must know the top five essential tips and tricks before creating their own.?

1. Your dashboard should cover up to a single screen or page; Companies have a tremendous amount of data, and not every detail can be placed in the dashboard. A dashboard should be like a picture or a photograph that gives the viewer instant insights into their data and warns you of those potential red flags. Keeping it to a single screen or page allows you to include only the utmost important details that your dashboard must convey.??
2. Only include the most critical, insightful details; it should not take hours to interpret the insights that a KPI dashboard is supposed to provide. Including the most critical and insightful details helps make business decisions faster, more precisely, and controlled.?
3. Choose an accessible way to display the dashboard; the choice of the software you choose to use is critical, as process owners and C-suite members in your organization must have access to it without facing any hurdles.?
4. Design your dashboard in a way that it is easy to look at, navigate, and understand; the need to make your dashboard in one single screen or page shouldn’t involve cramming information to make it harder to understand. An ideal dashboard must contain only relevant information aesthetically and logically.?
5. Focus on conveying the information; often, dashboards get made with a lot of excessive designs and styling to the point that it doesn’t serve the purpose of conveying information. Avoid intense?color?and designs, and use it only when it provides concise meaning to the dashboard.?

CONCLUSION

Every Organization requires organizing and developing the right kind of KPIs (Key performance indicators) to extract meaningful insights to make decisions effectively. However, KPIs will only prove effective if the people who need the information get it in the most comprehensible way. The whole purpose of the KPI dashboard is to impart information or relevant data to the people who need them. Therefore, designing the most intelligible, insightful KPI dashboard is highly crucial.??

Many organizations prefer to design their own KPI dashboard, and some choose to cling to expert help. With today’s advanced software solutions like Power BI and Tableau, users can create visually rich color-coded insightful KPI dashboards within a fraction of time.