What the deal with dashboards and scorecards these days?

I recently attended a Gartner BI analyst conference in Chicago; it was interesting to get a glimpse into their take on the BI market and the direction of the future technologies and trends.

One observation that stood out was the movement of dashboards and scorecards down the Gartner hype cycle into what they call the trough of disillusionment, similar to downgrading technologies to the status of an overrated sports star. The hype we saw two years ago around dashboards and scorecards is certainly somewhat diminished as it has become less about having a dashboard or scorecard and more about doing something useful with it.

This goes back to the old performance management mantra that the prettiest dashboard in the world doesn’t mean a thing if the information is presents isn’t trusted and meaningful.
What this transformation essentially represents is that our eyes aren’t as big as stomach, as the sex appeal of visualization technology is beginning to wear off and stabilize to the route of the problem; trusted, managed data.

Dashboards and scorecards will continue to incorporate design flexibility and improved simplicity but there are three areas that seem to become focal points as we travel along this road.

The first focal point is effectively monitoring information, understanding what happened and have some sense of direction to what will happen. Of course, it’s only useful to monitor the right information and if you take the approach that you have to see it to believe it and much of this first phase relates back to how your information is structured.

The second area of emphasis is analytics that add deeper context around information and allow a better understanding of the who, what, where, and why. One set of questions will always expose another set of questions and as data sets increase in size so will the need for a multi-dimensional approach.

And finally a planning component to have insight into what the future will hold and being able to adjust your plan according to performance. Planning and budgeting has long been the staple of a corporate performance management approach but needs to be attached to the rhythm of the business and impact future fiscal targets.

Regardless of the technology and function, it is certainly about driving towards a continual/repeatable process, only then will you achieve true performance management enlightenment.

Happy scorecarding,
Performance Guys