Dashboards – A Convergence of Performance Management and Business Intelligence

Dashboards represent a convergence of two key performance capabilities:

Performance Management Methodology – the process of measuring and monitoring progress towards a well-defined set of strategic goals
Business Intelligence – tools, technologies and processes used to transform data and information into insight to optimize decision making. This includes elements such as: data warehousing, data integration, reporting, analysis and data mining technology.

So, why are dashboards the power broker between these two capabilities?

Dashboards are common to both capabilities; but used in one perspective without the other they lose a significant amount of value.

Dashboards used solely with performance management environments are rather static, portraying insight as it is now – a snapshot of current objectives without a means to dynamically measure performance against those objectives and analyse data to identify ways to improve.

Dashboards used solely with BI lack connection with a strategic performance framework – they are capable of deep analysis, but this is meaningful without a clear reason for doing so.

How PM & BI Work Together

Deployed together, dashboards help an organization:

Communicate Strategy – to share key strategies and objectives down through an organization in a way that is meaningful to the role of the individual. In this way, dashboards act as change agent and motivator to drive wider collaboration to common goals.
Monitor and Manage Strategic Execution – strategic planning is relatively well done; execution to that strategy is generally not well done. The main reason for this is that the strategic plan loses visibility once it moves down beyond 2-3 level of management. Dashboards help maintain that visibility right down to the lowest level operational and administrative roles. They help the business recognize when and where core value processes are not linked to a goal or driving action in an effective and/or efficient way.
Improve Strategic Performance – once areas of weakness are identified through the dashboard, initiatives can be launched through the performance management system to resolve this issue – driving continuous improvement in overall performance. Likewise, where dashboards show an opportunity insight, resources can be realigned to leverage that opportunity.

Who Benefits from PM + BI?

The information and insights delivered by a dashboard are valuable to over 95% of the organization. They help every single person in the organization understand how their daily work contributes to the higher goals; and for most, they provide an individually customisable tool to help link specific tasks to key result areas.

Deploying Dashboards

Sadly, most BI tools are still rather complex, hefty beasts that spare few the misery of finding their way through the plethora of features to get to the core capabilities. In deploying dashboards to a business I caution against adopting an open self-service BI until such time as a controlled, read only set of dashboards have been used by the business for several months. During this learning period, users will find it easier to experience the benefits of dashboards, without the complexity of the technology. They will quickly gain insight into new information requirements that will help them make better decisions and execute strategy in a more controlled, efficient and effective way.

Performance Management and Dashboards are equal partners in helping an organization dramatically improve the culture of their organization and discover new ways of working better, as a unified team, to a common purpose.

To learn more about how to rapidly implement a strategic performance improvement framework, incorporating business intelligence.