Management dashboards – graphs or figures?

A picture’s worth a thousand words.

But should a management dashboard include figures, graphs or both?

Is this a good example?



Once KPIs have been determined, at each level of management, then dashboards for each director and manager need to be designed.

Simplicity and clarity must be foremost, to impart information “at a glance”:

• Limited number of true KPIs (both results and drivers)
• Comparison against target, budget, forecast or comparative period
• Colour coding to highlight success and issues
• Absolute values (perhaps displayed as dials)
• Graphs to show trends over time

The key is to focus on headline numbers, with the option to drill down to the detail and further analysis. Overall then, there needs to be a mixture of graphs and figures.

Some of the KPIs may also benefit from verbal commentary. How about “tweets”? Not by using Twitter but by showing a set of comments, each within 140 characters. For example: ”YTD profit before tax up 15% on last year at £2.4m, £0.2m up on budget. On track to exceed £3.5m forecast at year end.”

Individuals will have their own preferences. It’s worth taking those views into account when designing the individual dashboards.

What preferences do you have?