What is a Dashboard Scorecard

A dashboard scorecard is simply a collection of charts, reports and data measurements designed to provide business managers with an understanding of an organization's current state measured against pre-determined goals. The dashboard scorecard is a powerful management tool that, when used properly, can provide managers with the information they need to make fast decisions to changing company conditions. The dashboard scorecard has until recently been the exclusive domain of enterprise organizations due to the complexity and high cost of deploying dashboard scorecard platforms; new technologies are becoming available, however, that are placing the dashboard scorecard in the hands of more and more managers.

The Balanced Dashboard Scorecard

A particular type of dashboard scorecard is known as the balanced dashboard scorecard. In a balanced dashboard scorecard the measurements tracked are typically associated with multiple aspects of the organization (finance, sales, operations etc.) and are tracked in a manner to present managers with an idea of the company's ability to meet or exceed strategic goals. The balanced dashboard scorecard is a superset of the dashboard scorecard and can take a significantly longer amount of time to implement due to the need to associate multiple data points in relationship to one another.

Planning your Dashboard Scorecard

Regardless of the dashboard scorecard type that you desire, the first step in deploying a dashboard scorecard is the planning stage. During the planning phase of dashboard scorecard development the goal is simply to identify the key metrics that will be important to all the departments and users that will be exposed to various dashboards scorecards. During this process, therefore, it's critical to understand which metrics are vital to your company and to each affected department and which are not. It's only through this discovery process that you can ensure that the dashboard scorecard you deploy will be useful and provide meaningful information to your users.

Deploying your Dashboard Scorecard

Deploying your dashboard scorecard is also a process that can take several forms. Two popular dashboard scorecard deployment methodologies are top down or by departmental area. The top down approach says that it's most important to put the dashboard scorecard in front of the key executives of the organization first, giving the key decision makers the tools needed to track overall company performance. The departmental methodology calls for the dashboard scorecard to be deployed in more critical departments first (like finance).

The Personal Dashboard Scorecard

One new trend in dashboard scorecard development is the concept of the personal dashboard scorecard. In this type of dashboard scorecard the end user himself is the primary author of the dashboard scorecard as well as the user. This form of "empowerment" for end users assumes that the day to day users of data have the most accurate view of the metrics that are required for an effective dashboard scorecard. Through this process therefore, the power of creating the dashboard scorecard is placed in the hands of those users.