Excel Dashboards and Reports for Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 9

Displaying Performance against a Target

In This Chapter

Using variance displays

Using progress bars

Creating bullet graphs

Showing performance against a range

Hopefully, this is an easy one to grasp. Someone sets a target, and someone else tries to reach that target. The target can be anything from a certain amount of revenue to a number of boxes shipped or to phone calls made. The business world is full of targets and goals. Your job is to find effective ways to represent performance against those targets.

What do I mean by performance against a target? Imagine that your goal is to break the land speed record, which is now 763 miles per hour. That makes the target 764 miles per hour, which will break the record. After you jump into your car and go as fast as you can, you will have a final speed. That number is your performance against the target.

In this chapter, I explore some new and interesting ways to create components that show performance against a target.

Showing Performance with Variances

The standard way to display performance against a target is to plot the ...