A dashboard gives you a visual summary of business data, often at a high level. Dashboards are popular as they enable you to see several KPIs at once.

According to an article in Businessweek "The dashboard is the CEO's killer app. A must have, making the gritty details of a business that are often buried deep within a large organization accessible at a glance to senior executives. " (Businessweek Feb 13 2006). With dashboarding, key changes in business metrics are instantly visible to managers, enabling them to make the necessary changes with impressive speed.

Thanks to web technology and Business Intelligence it is more possible than ever before for executives to keep a finger on their company’s pulse, by seeing the whole picture of whatever KPIs they need to monitor

Although there is no set format, a typical executive dashboard might contain various pie and bar charts and a spreadsheet-type analysis. Other popular elements include maps and gauges (shown above). Dashboard design is not always straightforward and should encompass readability, interest, and of course – relevant KPIs.

Producing a KPI dashboard might involve the following elements:

- web based reporting
- KPI scorecarding
- Personalised portal page
- Data collection in a Data Mart

You can store and monitor any number of KPIs using a dashboard system – the only limitation is your imagination, and the information available through your data collection.

What You Need
An executive dashboard is, in effect, the end of a complex chain of information-gathering and delivery. Data will probably have to be gathered from various sources into a Data Warehouse or operational data store and delivered overnight or on a regular basis. KPIs will need to be calculated. The various components of the dashboard (charts, spreadsheets etc) will need to be created. And of course the dashboard will have to be designed and delivered.

Once all this is done, however, the benefits can be enormous. Dashboarding as a way of presenting information is catching on fast. Watch this space!