Businesses have reached the terminology dashboards from cars. In many ways, this analogy holds. There are so many working parts in a business that influence the overall operations. The business dashboard summarizes these events in a simple, intuitive way of real-time data. In cars, you can quickly see how far you go, how much fuel in your tank, and more. It also provides a “Check Engine” sign as a warning when something is wrong with the engine.
In the same way, the function of the dashboard is to provide real-time results by adding and subtracting all the data you collect, known as your performance Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Simplify your data into a more manageable resource for visual information that allows you to see what you are doing well and where you need to improve.
What is a productivity dashboard?
The productivity dashboard is a summary of all the activities and tasks and is measured in terms of the resources (time, money, technology) used and the results obtained. Allows employees to quickly view statistics about their performance and productivity.
When used properly, dashboards can be used to help you make informed decisions that have a profound effect on business performance – which ultimately has a profound effect on the bottom-line result.
What Are Productivity Dashboards Used for?
Productivity dashboards show how well the work done is done by converting the available inputs into useful outputs. They also determine the efficiency (demand output compared to used resources) of the employee and measure employee performance (time versus cost).
Employee productivity can be calculated by dividing the average output at each reporting time by the total cost incurred or resources. Productivity dashboards allow you to integrate individual product statistics into a summary of employee productivity across the company.
In terms of productivity, efficiency, and performance, many productivity dashboards allow to determine and calculate cost-effectiveness. A manager can use powerful job analysis tools to calculate the cost of a particular project and compare this estimate with the expected profit. If profits appear to be greater than the cost, the work will save.
Dashboard reports are very different from traditional reports in their way, focus, and preparation. The dashboard displays a variety of reports from multiple sources and working on a single page and uses graphs and tables to summarize many details. The dashboard performance steps are frequently updated and should represent the best information available while preparing the report.
Real-time reporting of many types of measures from multiple data sources requires reporting experts to extract unrelated data and analyze it as part of the end-of-month reporting process. Routes and processes may need to be put in place to ensure raw data relative to expected values so that users do not make decisions based on inaccurate data.
Recommended Article to Read Next: 8 Ways Productivity Softwares can Benefit You
Why are productivity dashboards important?
There are several reasons why businesses and organizations require and use dashboards. Overall, it comes down to the fact that dashboards are extremely beneficial in organizing their data and making sure they have the key components of their business within their sight.
Here’s a list of 10 benefits of using productivity dashboards:
1. Get Full Visibility in Operational Process
Real-time line visibility is essential for optimal performance. Dashboards allow you to see exactly what is happening with production lines at any time. You can see what works, what does not, where there are problems, and much more.
With your dashboard, you will know exactly how your business is performing in all areas. For example, your dashboard can show you exactly how your last email to your customers went. How many people opened the email? How much did it cost? Such responses should appear automatically in your dashboard. Compare this with the many business owners who must sign in to their email system or ask someone else to do so.
2. Save Time
How much time do you or your employees spend reporting on Excel or other spreadsheet programs? Any report you create more than one must go into your dashboard. And once in your dashboard, the report can be adjusted to update every hour.
3. Use Data to Make Informed Decisions
Research from Aberdeen shows the use of real-time dashboards aids in better decision-making. Over the past two years, real-time dashboard users have improved their decision-making time by 2.5 times greater than those who do not use dashboards. For example, you may not know when to repair equipment or open new lines to increase pass. Production meetings work best when you have the right information to pass on!
The fact is that when you see your key metrics in your dashboard, you start by improving your results. So far, the best dashboards automatically show signs of success, such as a green arrow pointing up when you are doing well and a red arrow pointing down when you are not. When you see red arrows, you naturally want to adjust the areas, so that they are green. And he does, and sales and profits go up as a result.
4. Manage Real-Time Performance
Do you know how well your line works at any given time? You cannot manage what you cannot measure. A dashboard can give you access to accurate real-time data you need with real OEE. By combining your systems into a single software system, you can see OEE metrics from across the production line.
5. Identify Problems Before They Happen
There may be problems with your production cord, which occurs under your nose. But except for sensitive data, do not miss the warning signs. The dashboard will help you to identify and analyze a problem-solving trend before it becomes a major, costly problem.
6. Reduce Mechanical Downtime
Not only do you point out problems before they happen, but you can also respond as soon as they do. The dashboard allows you to see mechanical problems in real-time, so your production team can quickly prioritize and resolve any issues quickly. Consider how much it costs for each minute of rest. Now imagine how much money a business can save by responding to problems quickly.
7. Remove QA and Downtime Sheets
Consider the amount of manual data entry and analysis that takes place in your institution, as well as the number of hours shared to collect data manually. The right dashboard software can create a truly paperless workflow for production lines. This not only saves time for data collection but also has fewer errors than hand-made processes. Best of all, it is faster and easier to see styles and patterns on the dashboard than using spreadsheets and reports.
8. Involve Employees and Improve Productivity
Teams work best when they can see details, such as quality metrics and scheduled scheduling times, compared to defined goals. With a dashboard, operators and managers can quickly understand what is going on in each line.
Operators will work hard to ensure that their line does not fall behind for quality and production purposes, while managers can use the dashboard to quickly identify issues or opportunities for better services. In addition, employees will share information and are more likely to propose changes to improve performance.
The dashboard allows you to measure performance by price. For example, your customer service manager may see metrics such as return rate, callback speed, etc. Importantly, when they see their performance in terms of numbers, especially if you use the green and red arrows mentioned above, they will simply work harder to improve performance and results.
9. Increase Profit
As discussed, your dashboard shows you exactly which areas of your business are performing poorly. Once you know this, you know exactly where you can focus your time to maximize results. On the other hand, your competitors may not be aware of this, so they spend their time in the wrong places. By knowing exactly what works for your business and what does not, it is easy to increase both sales and profits.
10. Reduce Stress
Dashboards provide such a fun and collaborative way to analyze all the important data and the important and insignificant classifications. They provide a summary of the provision you want to see, exactly how you want to see it. In addition, complete data is transmitted through visual representations, graphs, charts, and summaries, making the data more user-friendly.
In these key metrics, you can see the monthly results and how they compare to the previous month and last year (color code with green arrows up when you do better than last time and red arrows pointing down when you are not). That way you quickly scan every aspect of the business to see how you are doing. And if there is a problem (e.g., revenue from email sales is low), you know exactly who in your company can contact to fix the problem.
So even if you are not in the office, you can easily relax, because you know exactly how your business is doing, and exactly which areas need improvement.
Types of Productivity Dashboards
There are different kinds of productivity dashboards that are used for different kinds of scenarios and use cases. While it is important to understand the impact of dashboards and integrate them into your business environment, it is also important to know which kind of dashboards are available and which one would fit your desired impact to maximize productivity and efficiency.
There are 4 kinds of productivity dashboards, namely:
Strategic Dashboard:
A strategic dashboard is a reporting tool for monitoring long-term company strategy with the help of critical success factors. They are often complex in their creation, offer a wide range of business impact, and are widely used by top management.
Strategic dashboards are often used in various types of business while aligning company strategic objectives. They track performance metrics against broad business objectives. As a result, these dashboards often summarize performance over time: last month, quarter, or year.
When a dashboard of strategies is well developed, designed, and implemented, it can effectively reduce the time required to achieve a particular key performance indicator, while minimizing operating costs.
Knowing what a dashboard in strategic planning is doing and why it is important, it is important to remember that these dashboards can give top teams a clear picture of strategic problems, and therefore, give them a chance to accomplish a particular course of action.
Strategic dashboards often share important metrics throughout the organization, so consider that they can be found throughout the organization. Management and the senior team may want to look at the bigger picture with strategic KPIs, but if this type of performance data is clearly shared with lower-level employees, there can be unexpected benefits. You never know when the next big idea in your organization will come from, and when you give the team all the information, that becomes especially true.
Operational Dashboard:
Operational Dashboards are one of the types of dashboards used to monitor and manage short-term tasks. As they focus on following operating procedures, they are often governed by lower management standards.
The purpose of this dashboard is to quickly provide a comprehensive picture of the day’s performance. Like a car dashboard, operational dashboards provide the viewer with information related to organizational performance quickly. They should not require a drill drop to be useful, because usually, the viewer will not have the option to use the dashboard before the first view.
Their value in today’s digital age lies in the fact that businesses are beginning to recognize the importance of fast and accurate data between working groups and departments. While unprecedented advances in reporting and analysis of the dashboard have made operational tasks much easier, co-managers can benefit greatly from using these types of dashboards, and visually and collaboratively identify real-time data problems that need to be addressed immediately.
Operational Dashboards are obviously the most common. They are widely used to monitor and analyze company operations in each area of business. These dashboards are always focused on informing about business diversity and are based on real-time data.
Performance metrics dashboards often end up in the hands of subject matter experts. This often leads to direct action, and then further analysis. Because of this, performance dashboards are often more detailed than strategic dashboards. They can also provide performance reports with a detailed view of specific data sets.
Analytical Dashboard:
If you use data to identify trends that can help you make decisions about the future, you are in the process of building an analytical dashboard. These dashboards are tools that the user should be able to interact with, question, and evaluate. Thus, features such as pivot tables and drill-downs are well suited for analysis dashboards.
Comparing and analyzing data between multiple variables is important for these dashboards. The user should be able to compare data over time, to see if performance differences are related to business practices (or if external forces, such as the time of year, have measurable effects on metrics). Cutting and systematically storing data allows the user to determine which attempts have been made.
Analytical dashboards can be an important tool in the right hands, but they require a certain level of understanding. Analytical dashboard data is often complex, as is the dashboard-directed exercise. Therefore, analytics dashboards are best left to technical experts unlike the rest of the company. Defining user permissions is an easy way to ensure that your analytical dashboards are provided to the appropriate group.
Tactical Dashboard:
A tactical dashboard is used to analyze and monitor processes performed by middle-level managers, emphasizing analysis. The organization then monitors the performance of the company’s objectives and submits recommendations for future strategic analysis.
Tactical dashboards are usually very descriptive dashboards. They are good at monitoring processes that support the organization’s long-term plans. These dashboards help guide users through the decision-making process. They benefit from the dashboard connection type by giving users the ability to view data.
The level of intelligent dashboard information falls between tactical and operational dashboards. The strategic sales dashboard can track your sales goal (real money compared to predicted revenue). Allows various filters and segmentation, including region, sales manager, and product.
The tactical dashboard could track sales of these specific products targeted at competitors at various times throughout the year. As they are a little more advanced, the dashboards are more strategic and tend to include more data visibility than active dashboards.
Conclusion
From the evidence provided above it is blatantly clear that in the technologically advanced data-driven world that we live in, dashboards have become an essential commodity for business rather than an impractical luxury. It is becoming increasingly important for businesses to use data effectively to make informed business decisions, and dashboards facilitate this process exponentially.
After all, the data and information available to them will help them understand the world around them, and insight can be leveraged to make their organization, and in turn the world, a better place.
