The idea of management dashboards, taking the automobile concept into performance management, has been around since the 1970s. Best practice has advanced considerably, not least as technology has provided ever more powerful and cheaper solutions.
But as with anything powerful, the opportunity to do more harm than good is ever present. Cheap tools make it tempting to do a DIY job. That could prove very expensive.
CIMA, the management accountants, have produced a useful paper that sets out the role of management dashboards within the overall topic of performance management – “Improving decision making in organisations - Unlocking business intelligence” . This was published in September 2008, so some of the details are a little out of date - for example Microsoft PerformancePoint has now been incorporated into SharePoint, but dropping the budgeting functionality.
CIMA also run a series of public Masterclasses that cover dashboards. Discounts are available for CIMA & ICAEW members and some other people - see details for each course, pages 10-13.
A lot of people like speedometer “gauges”, as in the graphic above. Here is an example that can be incorporated into Excel.
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