Executive Dashboard & it's Importance - Web Analytics

A Dashboard is a visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so that the information can be monitored at a glance. We can define an Effective Dashboard as one that enables the users to visually display the relevant information that effects or is needed to achieve business objectives. An Executive Dashboard gives a clear picture of the data and the insights visually to the corporate executives. Also it gives a sense of the big picture before digging deep into the data insights.

The Executive dashboard is a one place to pull all the information or the data needed for the upper management team or to the executives. It gives numerous benefits to the business executives including:

• Visibility - It gives the user a great visibility and insights
• Continuous and Real-time Improvements - The executive dashboard measures your performance and helps to improve throughout the organization.
• Saving Time - Since it always shows the real-time and latest results, it saves time and cost for the business executives.
• Measuring Performance against the Plan -  Dashboards helps to analyze and measure the performance goals against the actual & real time results.

An Effective Dashboard features include:

• Graphical User Interface display that is easy to navigate the information or the data.
• A logical flow or structure after the dashboard that makes the user to access the data with ease.
• Visual displays that can be easily customized to meet the specific user needs.
• Data or the Information from the multiple sources or departments.

Trinity Mindset :-

To design and develop an executive dashboard, we need a strategic approach about the decision making in order to build out a world class decision making platform. It is called the Trinity Mindset.

The goal of the trinity mindset is to find the actionable insights by analyzing the metrics to derive strategic decision and a sustainable competitive advantage. There are three components for a Trinity Mindset which are:

1. Behavior Analysis
2. Outcomes Analysis
3. Experience

Behavior Analysis :-

The first component of the Trinity Mindset is Analyzing the Customers' behavior using Click stream analysis, segmentation & Key metrics. The intent of this process is to get the insights about the Customer behavior and the site visitors.

Outcomes Analysis :-

The second component is the Outcomes Analysis which answers the "So What" questions. This is meant to get the insights on the final outcomes of the actions performed for the customer and the company. This actually helps to measure the website's performance towards achieving their business objectives and the goals. Every website should have a articulated outcome to achieve the goals. The Revenue, conversion rates are the nuances of the outcomes.

Customer Experiences :-

The last and final component is to gain the Customer experiences about the website. This is the most important element as it used to analyze the customer experiences by conducting surveys & usability tests. The Voices of the Customer is important as it helps to take a strategic decision for the executives and also to implement a Customer driven innovation business model.

The Trinity mindset empowers to understand the Customer/User experience so explicitly that you can influence the right customer behavior which will lead to win-win outcomes for the company and its customers.

Building an Effective Web Analytics Dashboard :-

Effective Dashboard is the only solution to manage one or many websites for the client and to organize the relevant data & the analytics. They are created on the fly or in real time. Dashboard is not to visualize all the data available but it is meant to be displaying the relevant data needed for the business. The steps taken to design an effective dashboard includes:

1. Selecting the Target Audience :-

Make sure the Dashboard is designed to target a specific type of user i.e. Is the dashboard being used by the executives to monitor the financial activities or is it used by the Marketing team. It often consists of mix of data : some of which is relevant to one audience and some to another.

2. Selecting the Right type of the Dashboard :-

There are three types of dashboard which includes:

1. Operational Dashboard - This type of the dashboard displays the data that are needed for the operations department in a company like the Server utilization, CPU utilization, etc.
2. Strategic / Executive Dashboard - This type of dashboard displays the KPI's that a company's executives are interested like the Periodic revenue, costs, sales pipeline , headcount, etc.
3. Analytical Dashboard - This displays the strategic data by exploring more on the data to get different insights.

By keeping in mind about these dashboards, we need to select them based on the audiences and their needs. For example a Marketing manager may need the Strategic view of the data.

3. Structure the Data Logically :- 

We need to ensure that the data are displayed along their logical groups. For example if a dashboard includes financial KPI's and Sales pipeline, ensure that the financial data are grouped together & also the sales data are grouped together. Grouping is often done based on their functionality like Product, Sales Marketing, Finance & People.

4. Make the Data Relevant to the Target Audience :-

Dashboard can have many target audiences  but we need to ensure that the data we display is relevant to the users. We need to identify the intended audience i.e. the individual Department, the whole company, individuals, suppliers, etc. and also their scope of the requirements. An executive dashboard should include the KPI data across all the departments.

5. Display the Intended Metrics only :-

Dashboards should contain only the relevant metrics and the information. It should avoid using all the metrics as it tends to lose the focus of the data. An executive dashboard for example should contain only 6 numbers in a page. We need to ensure that only relevant information are displayed to the target audience.

6. Data Refreshment :-

We need to ensure that the dashboard are refreshed to get the real-time and correct data to derive decisions out of it. It can be Real-time or Daily, weekly, monthly depending on the user needs. Most often Operational dashboard must contain real-time data whereas an executive dashboard may contain data that's not being refreshed or refreshed less frequently.

References:-

1. Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability & Science of Customer Centricity, 2007, Author: Avinash Kaushik
2. Web Analytics- An Hour a day, First Edition, 2007, Author : Avinash Kaushik
3. https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/whitepapers/dashboards-for-financial-services.pdf
4. http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/trinity-a-mindset-strategic-approach/
5. https://www.geckoboard.com/blog/building-great-dashboards-6-golden-rules-to-successful-dashboard-design/#.Vkq7rvkzbIV
6. http://www.forbes.com/sites/davelavinsky/2013/09/06/executive-dashboards-what-they-are-why-every-business-needs-one/
7. http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/executive-dashboard