Balanced Scorecards and Operational Dashboards with Microsoft Excel, 2nd Edition

Part II

Operational Performance with Dashboards

In This Part

• Chapter 9: Developing Executive and Operational Dashboards
• Chapter 10: Mapping Your Operational Processes
• Chapter 11: Identifying Critical Metrics and Key Performance Indicators

Chapter 9

Developing Executive and Operational Dashboards

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

—Sun Tzu

Dashboards are not “the next new thing.” I remember developing what were probably the first executive information systems (EISs) that used Microsoft Excel in the late 1980s for an international division of a major pharmaceutical company. It saved their analysts weeks of Lotus 1-2-3 and manual work. And then there were the myriad decision support systems (DSSs) that everyone hoped would help business decision-makers. But EIS and DSS never reached the level of impact that their proponents hoped for.

So what has changed between now and then? Many of the original EISs and DSSs were built as a way of putting the same information online that was previously collected in printed reports or documents.

NOTE Scorecards and dashboards should be the lever that changes culture in an organization.

If dashboards are to succeed in improving performance, they must

• Be based on the causal links that drive success for organizational objectives
• Derive their metrics using a scientific process
• Increase the speed, ease, and accuracy of decision-making
• Drive discussion on what is causing ...