5 steps to design your mobile dashboard with Status Board and FileMaker

In order to achieve their goals in a very competitive environment, organizations have to be able to measure, analyze and drive their performance in real time. In this context, managers have to rely on dashboards to improve the return on investment of their actions. This decision support tool helps them evaluate the performance of their organization, warns them on issues that require immediate actions and highlights trends and statistics that can be leveraged to reach the goals of the organization. According to Stephen Few’s [1] definition, « A Dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance. ». This definition highlights some of the key features of an efficient dashboard solution. The information has to be visually displayed, rapidly understandable, aggregated and directly linked to the objectives of the organization. Directly inspired from Few’s definition, this article introduces the 5 key steps to consider in a dashboard project. After reading it, you will be able to use the best practices that are mentioned here to successfully implement your own project. This simple and realistic approach to dashboard design provides you with certain key elements through an example we called “Test Project”.

Create you key performance indicators

A key performance indicator is a computed measure compared to an objective. After analyzing the variance between targeted and actual performance, managers are able to evaluate the success of an organization in achieving its business objectives and adjust their actions accordingly. In order to be efficient, Key Performance Indicators have to support decisions that managers will make in the future. In your dashboard, you should avoid using generic metrics that are not relevant to your company and focus on creating a limited number of KPIs, customized to your own strategy. You will need to meet with subject-matter experts and analyze the reports that are used on a regular basis to define the key metrics and thresholds that will highlight a poor, fair or excellent performance. It is very important to document and share the meaning of your KPIs, the way they have to be computed, the analysis context and the data sources with the managers involved in the project. This “dictionary” will prevent them from making irrelevant analysis assumptions that could influence the decision-making process. Test Project: In our example, the general manager of an SMB would like to maximize the profitability and growth rate of the company. The following metrics were chosen to create KPIs for the dashboard: EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization), Gross Sales, Gross Sales compared to Sales Capacity, Gross Sales per employee, Invoiced Rate and Gross Estimates volume.

• EBITDA will be analyzed for the whole company and its 2 departments, over 12 months, the current quarter and month.
• Gross Sales will be analyzed for the whole company and its 2 departments, over 12 months, the current quarter and month.
• Gross Sales compared to Sales Capacity will be analyzed per department.
• Gross Sales per employee will be analyzed per department.
• Invoiced Rate will be analyzed per department.
• Gross Estimates volume will be analyzed per department.

Identify, analyze and integrate your data sources

After creating metrics customized to your own business objectives, you will have to make sure the data sources necessary to compute these metrics are available and reliable. Your data sources could be in different information systems (FileMaker, accounting software, Excel files, Google Analytics…), in different formats and saved at different levels of detail. A business analyst will have to define the rules to extract your data, choose the appropriate level of detail and compute the metrics that you will store in the FileMaker platform. Once these are documented, a programmer will be able to automate this process of extracting your data sources, loading the computed information in the FileMaker platform and transferring the KPIs to your Status Board dashboard. This step is very important in order for you to get high quality information on a regular basis. Prototype your dashboard very early in the process and test your data throughout the development step. In order to avoid spending time and money in developing two different solutions, it is very important that you make sure the information you get on your dashboard is actually what you need prior to automating your solution. Test, prototype and share your dashboard with every manager so that it can modified early in the process and business analysts can still modify business rules to find new ways to provide you with the information you need. Test Project: All the data sources of the project are on the FileMaker platform and will be aggregated to produce the following KPIs:

• EBITDA and targets per month for the last 12 months.
• EBITDA and targets per month and per department for the current quarter and month.
• Gross Sales and targets per month for the last 12 months.
• Gross Sales and targets per month and per department for the current quarter and month.
• Gross Sales compared to Sales Capacity’s variance to target for the current month.
• Gross Sales per employee’s variance to target for the current month.
• Invoiced Rate’s variance to target for the current month.
• Gross Estimates volume’s variance to target for the current month.

Visualize the information on your dashboard

Dashboards have to be understandable at a glance to speed up the decision making process, therefore a visual display of the information is always favored. Managers will understand the situation in “real time” if you use an appropriate chart and color code. Because all your KPIs have to fit on a single screen, you should use simple and shapes and charts to make it easier to read. As a result, bar and line graphs should be on your dashboard rather than pie charts, for instance. Pie charts will need more room for you to fit essential data like legends, titles and scales. Indicators that require an immediate attention should be instantly understandable. You can highlight these indicators by using a simple universal color code like green, yellow and red for your performance thresholds. Thus, managers instantly understand their performance for each KPI. You should use more neutral colors for contextual data in order to emphasize the data that needs to be analyzed. Test Project: Two different graphs were chosen: line and bar graphs. The metrics concerning the SMB as a whole will be located on top and the ones concerning the 2 departments at the bottom of the dashboard so that the manager can read the information from top to bottom and general to details. In order to simplify this test project we defined only 2 performance thresholds: over target (in green) and under target (in red). The contextual data will be in white, gray and blue.

Deploy your solution in your organization

To fully benefit from your dashboard solution, it must be easy to modify it, access it and control who you want share this information with. A simple list of the managers authorized to access your dashboard should be documented and kept up-to-date. Using iPads and Status Board, managers will be able to collaborate by sharing their dashboards in a few clicks or connecting to a TV screen in HDTV. Remote collaboration between managers simplifies the decision making process. An organization that centralizes and automates the integration of the data it needs to make proper decisions will save time and improve its efficiency. Business analysts will be able to spend more time actually analyzing data instead of crunching it to create reports. Another important advantage of centralizing information is to get “a single version of the truth”. Many managers have to face inconsistent reports based on different analysis assumptions or different computing methods. Unique business rules and centralized information accessible for decision making, make it possible for all the managers of the organization to work in the same direction. Test Project: The dashboard can be shared between C-Level executives and will be accessible through the iPad application Status Board. It will also be presented every month during the board meeting of the company on the TV screen of their conference room. C-level executives will be able to collaborate on complex decision by emailing their dashboard with their comments.

Reiterate the process to adapt to changes

The internal and external environment of organizations is constantly changing and your dashboard solution should be flexible enough to rapidly incorporate new information. A new business unit, product line or department will bring new information needs and have to be taken into account. You should analyze your KPIs on a regular basis to make sure they still provide you with all the information you need. Maintaining your dashboard in an agile way will enable you to progressively incorporate new KPIs without having to work on major changes (more expensive and longer). Test Project : After using the dashboard on a regular basis, new metrics concerning the number of new customers in a specific niche will be incorporated to the solution. This new iteration of the project will help managers measure the success of the SMB in penetrating a new market. [1] Information Dashboard Design: the effective visual communication of data, Stephen Few, 2006, O’Reilly.