BI Dashboards
Business Intelligence, Data visualization, KPI
Operational dashboards
As strategic and tactical dashboard types have a lot in common, operational dashboards seem significantly different. Basically strategic and tactical dashboards are designed for executives, and operational dashboards are being used mostly on operational level (in a given department, by its employees), hardly ever by executives. That's why operational dashboards provide detailed insights, while general reviews aren't a part of their users' interest.
Whilst operational dashboards are being used on departmental level, they have
to be prepared for enabling detailed analysis and particular processes.
Their roots, reasons, and potential methods for – if process works profitably – increasing the benefits or –
when the situation is not like we wanted it to be – reverting the trends.
Examples of operational dashboards
Below an example of how operational dashboard can be used in various departments of an organization:
- In case of manufacturing department the thing is that managers get twofold points of view to base on. At first, the rate of returns for instance might be considered as a monthly value. Then, it could be useful to compare it with the one we expected or planned. Comparing actual and target rates is extremely important for each company.
- The most meaningful advantage of operational dashboards is a possibility to investigate the same data from diverse perspectives. In case of sales department, we might therefore check the actual sales, then compare it with the one from before a month, and – finally – state whether the goal was achieved. That's not the end yet. We might group sales data by person or prepare a list of best customers, as well.
- As for services department, whole thing goes around customers' complaints. And this is what operational dashboards help with. Thank to them, employees and managers might check the number of support calls or complaints per month, for instance. These are stats, but important while trying to improve services' efficiency and – therefore – company's appearance.
- While thinking about human resources department, we might distinguish plenty of measurable factors which most common employee retention rate and employee satisfaction score are of.
- The case of finance department is so complex that choosing one metric to illustrate the generality would be a misunderstanding. Basically the operational dashboards extremely-well facilitate finance departments' work.
An example of business intelligence operational dashboard in human resources department (reasons for the job resignation in IT in Americas in the enterprise):
Another example of an operational dashboard for a car manufacturer:
