Dashboards

If You Can’t Measure You Can’t Manage

By
Graham Knight
Managing Director
iuvare ltd

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 Agenda
•What Is A Dashboard?
•Where Should You Start?
•Why Do You Need One?
•What Do You Measure?
•What Types Of Presentation?
•What Should You Avoid?
•What Does It Cost?
•Some Examples
•The Benefits
•Summary

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 What Is A Dashboard?

A means of measuring where you are with

any aspect of your business preferably in
“the blink of an eye”.

Also referred to as “Balanced Scorecard” or “Key

Performance Indicators” (KPIs)

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 Where Should You Start?
With a Business Plan

“…fail to plan you plan to fail…”

•Understand what you are expecting from your business

•Determine what has to happen and by when
•Identify the key drivers for your business

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 Why Do You Need One?
• As a business grows there becomes just too many plates
to spin
• Avoids surprises – the bigger the business the bigger the
numbers (less wiggle room)
• Leads to more formality
• Delegates responsibility – ties into personal objective
setting and appraisals
• Enables you to “compare and contrast” – by looking at
trends for example
• Assists in “What If” forecasting

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 What Do You Measure?
• Financials (revenues, costs, profit, creditors, debtors, gross margin…)
• Pipeline (prospects/suspects/funnel…)
• Sales (conversions, order values, type…)
• Marketing (leads, source…)
• Product/service profiles
• Manufacturing (volume, waste, quality…)
• Fulfilment (volumes, complaints, profitability…)
• People factors (training days, utilisation..)
• Inventory (value, slow moving stock…)
• Solvency (cash vs creditors vs debtors)

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 What Should You Avoid?

Paralysis through analysis!!

Essentially all information should be easy to

record and extract.

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 What Types Of Presentation?
• Line Charts
• Histograms
• Pie Charts
• Tables
• Kivigraphs
• Traffic Lights
• Signposts
• Business on a page
• …and variations on the theme...

…more benefit if it is “rolling”.

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 Some Examples

• A group of numbers can be transformed…

Fees £s
S e p O c t N o vD e cJ a n F e bM a rA p r M a yJ u n J u l A
A c t u a l1 1£ 7s , 10 10 49 , 88 14 ,027 77 7, 38 66 3, 29 51 6, 98 62 1, 09 35 9, 01 90 80 , 10 12 53 31 40 51 , 13 11
T a r g e 1t 1£ 5s , 10 10 50 , 80 50 ,008 05 0, 08 05 0, 09 02 0, 99 42 4, 99 42 4, 9 94 84 , 9 94 84 , 9 94 84 , 91 40 4

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 Some Examples

• Line Charts

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 Some Examples

• Histograms

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 Some Examples

• Histograms

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 Some Examples

• Tables

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 What Does It Cost?

• Like most things in life you get out what you put in
• Use data from your existing systems
• Use data that is collected anyway
• Use excel to produce graphs (ODBC from Sage)
• There may be some measurements to put in place
• Always consider the ROI
• Typically takes me 2 hours for a £1m T/O business
once dashboard is in place

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 The Benefits
• Reduced surprises as the dashboard evolves
• Introduces measurement in a visual way
• Changes your culture from fire fighting to fire prevention
• Gives focus to achieving the key objectives of the business
• Introduces more accountability
• Staff become more aware and so make more informed
decisions
• Makes the business function more as a team
• If done correctly the business performance will improve
• Helps you make more informed decisions

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 The Summary
•Start with a Business Plan
•Define all the aspects of the business you intend to
measure
•Define where the data comes from
•Ensure that the data is easy to collect
•Ensure the measurement is regularly reviewed at a
senior level

…whatever you measure gets better!!

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 Graham Knight
Managing Director
iuvare ltd
Email: grahamknight@iib.ws
Website: www.iuvare.co.uk
Mobile: 0771 866 1890

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