Three types, and what each is for
- Diagnostic. To understand why something changed. The main one for an owner.
- Operational. To see how the process is running right now. For the head of sales.
- Exploratory. To hunt for patterns once, against a specific question.
Symptoms of a bad dashboard
- metrics stand side by side with no connection between them
- no hierarchy: everything is equally important
- no answer to the question «why»
- too many visualisations
What to put in front of a sales-team owner
- Cash in the bank for the period, plan and actual.
- Enquiry count and conversion to payment.
- First response time: the median, and the share who waited longer than an hour.
- Stalled conversations: how many, and for how many days.
- Receivables: how much, and how much of it overdue.
- The same numbers split by rep.
Six blocks, one screen. Everything else opens with a click from those six rather than sitting next to them.
How to phrase the goal
Bad: «show the key metrics», «bring the data into one place». Good: «when the numbers move outside their range, understand quickly what deviated and how badly, so I can decide whether a response is needed».