Why We Need a Management Dashboard?

“Pilots’ instincts are often wrong in bad weather and climates. Therefore, in-flight, trust our dashboard.”

——From “The Financial Report is Like a Story Book” by Liu Shunren, a professor at Taiwan University

The management dashboard is a “one-step” decision support management information center system for executives.

In layman’s terms, executives can instantly see all the important data needed to make decisions from a dashboard. Just like the dashboard of an airplane, it displays key indicators (KPIs) of a company’s operations through various common chart images in the form of a dashboard, intuitively monitors the operation of the enterprise, and can alert and analyze abnormal key indicators.

3 Types of Dashboard 

How to plan a good dashboard?

Most dashboard displays have a specific theme or category. From a strategic perspective, it can be roughly divided into three types from top to bottom:

Strategic dashboard,

Analytical dashboard,

Operational dashboard.

Strategic dashboard

The role of the strategic dashboard is mainly to allow users to quickly grasp the operation situation of the enterprise, and quickly make decisions based on this, summarize the past or formulate strategic goals for the future. The operating situation here is mainly what has happened in the past. Therefore, the strategic dashboard does not require real-time data display, but a concise visual display of critical mission information. This concise and intuitive information helps managers quickly implement decision-making and locate, diagnose problems with poor operations.

The strategic dashboard can help managers to report results at any time so that departments and enterprises can work towards the goal in the right direction. Similar to the dashboard of cars and airplanes, the strategic management dashboard allows managers to clearly know at any time that the department they are controlling and which stage the enterprise have come to, and can focus on achieving the goal.

Financial Index Analysis of Shopping Malls

Profit Center

Analytical dashboard

The role of the analytical dashboard is mainly to allow managers not only to see the information on the surface but also to delve into the cause of the phenomenon on the surface. Through drilling and parameter linkage, starting from the phenomenon, look for the cause along with the context of the data. For example, why does the sales performance decline, and what is the reason for the long recovery time?

The analytical dashboard is more service of middle management from implementing a strategy to tactical execution level. This part needs to reflect the direct manifestation of problems, prioritization, and direct action.

The analytical dashboard can be either strategic or operational, or more strategic. The main difference is the level of information. It contains detailed comparisons of multiple factors and time-based changes between variables.

Smart Tourism Analysis Center

Operational dashboard

The operational dashboard emphasizes continuous, real-time information reporting. Therefore, the timeliness of the data is relatively high. Operational dashboard, which is used to monitor daily progress and output to ensure that the expected plan is consistent with the actual achievement of performance, that is, to ensure that the strategic goals are decomposed into daily check.

The operational dashboard needs to start with business needs, to realize business operation reminding, monitoring and early warning functions.

KPI monitoring: The monitoring of key indicators can ensure that we control the overall operation, and display the core indicators in the fields of business, risk, performance and other areas in front of the monitor through graphics and dashboards.

Threshold early warning: Another factor accompanying KPI monitoring is necessarily an early warning factor. Alerts are issued through eye-catching colors such as background highlights (red, green, blue).

Real-time data monitoring: Some industries require real-time monitoring of key indicators, such as exchange transaction monitoring, flight monitoring, and subway line operation monitoring.

Intelligent Transportation Monitoring System

Multi-dimensional Department

Different management roles have a different focus. The executive can focus on the dashboard of the general manager, the sales manager can focus on the sales management dashboard, and the financial director can focus on the working capital management dashboard.

General Manager

General Manager Management dashboard is an ERP-based high-level decision support system. Through the detailed index system, the operating status of the enterprise is reflected in real-time, and the collected data is visualized, intuitive and concrete.

Electricity Power Plant Monitoring

Sales Manager

Through the sales management dashboard, the data is summarized and automated, which frees the sales manager from the traditional data reporting, and can easily grasp a series of data such as the company’s sales goals, sales activities, costs and expenses.

Sales Analysis

Financial Director

The three financial tables cover a large amount of financial data, and the financial director generally focuses on important abnormal data. How to find abnormalities more efficiently and improve the speed of information acquisition? How to design a combination of indicators to show the financial status of the enterprise more intuitively? These questions are their focus.

The financial dashboard refines and integrates the important indicators that affect the financial health of the company, assists in decision-making, and timely detect abnormalities in the enterprise, thereby improving the management efficiency of the entire enterprise.

Financial Position Analysis

Human Resources Supervisor

Enterprises need to improve the satisfaction and loyalty of internal employees through effective personnel management, thereby increasing employee contributions, and helping managers to create value-chain profits through effective organizational management to reduce costs and accelerate growth.

The human management dashboard can grasp a series of data such as the company’s staff structure, employee salary, employee status, attendance analysis, and so on.

Marketing Supervisor

As market conditions become more complex, companies are increasingly challenged in marketing decisions. Establishing a scientific marketing data system is an important basis for ensuring the scientificity of marketing decisions.

The marketing management dashboard is proposed for marketing leaders, so that they can grasp the overall marketing overview and whether key indicators are abnormal in real-time.

Marketing Analysis

Conclusion

Data visualization software is required to make these cool data charts. FineReport is a good choice, and it is completely free for the personal version. There are many templates to choose from. You can refer to our online demo platform.

Download: https://www.finereport.com/en/download2

Get free activation code: https://www.finereport.com/en/activation

Also, you can follow our Facebook and inbox to get the free templates!!