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Dashboards that serve EVERY decision-maker

PUBLISHED ON 15 MAY, 2014

It has become quite ‘cool’ in the world of analytics to try to move away from the technical side and focus on Business Users.

And whilst we agree wholeheartedly that actions with an impact on long-term strategic objectives often rely on clearance from this upper management’ (rightly so as it is these individuals who know the most about organizational stakeholder demands, strategies and objectives), we understand the value of decision makers at each level of the organization.

This is the principal reason that we focus on experience, role, and objective-driven dashboards (apart from industry-tailored dashboards of course) that foster collaboration, accountability, and transparency.

Let’s consider a scenario where we only delivery dashboards to senior management. Ok, good… they will be able to see the most relevant information for them, comprised of data coming from every important source. But they will not truly have context for how these indicators came to perform in this manner, what they really represent, and how they can be improved.

It is only when dashboards are delivered to decision-makers at every level that this understanding will be transferred to Business users. By linking important indicators from dashboards of other profiles, these users will be able to gain access to the campaign-based data and strategic indicators that feed into the data seen on the their dashboard. This will allow us to achieve effective “Goal-driven optimization” rather than a “top-down approach” based on taking defensive action after objectives have not been met, or a “bottom-up approach” based on preemptive suggestions without so much knowledge of business objectives or authority to implement changes.

The expertise of an analyst or area manager should never be underestimated. It would be foolish not to consider the impact that the achievement of short-term strategic goals has on whether or not we achieve medium-term objectives, which of course also impacts on the realization of long-term goals.

In summary, just because a certain decision-maker isn’t able to directly impact on the achievement of global objectives doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t have access to strategic, objective-driven dashboards. Quite the contrary, to fully exploit the expertise of all decision-makers, collaborative dashboards should be used by all to ensure that Business Users have the context and understanding they need to make informed and impactful decisions.