You’ve spent countless hours preparing a great executive dashboard for your organization. After a few months, you realize that no one is using it.
While you don’t receive any complaints about the dashboard, you also don’t receive any praise. It may feel like a literal gut punch when you went to great efforts to deliver what the organization said was needed.
The First Sign of a Problem
You should be concerned when no one is complaining or asking for dashboard modifications. When a dashboard is providing value, the users have improvement ideas or want to see even more information. You should strive for a functional dashboard that drives organizational action. When this happens, the business understands the value of being data-driven.
Three Most Common Reasons Dashboards Are Ignored
Here are the most common dashboard adoption issues – and how to overcome them.
- Your Dashboard is Beautiful But Not Useful
Dashboards should contain vital information to the business.- Does management routinely track this information?
- Are you measuring what is needed or just using available data?
- Were you asked to create this dashboard?
- Your Dashboard is Not Trustworthy or Timely
Once a dashboard is made available, it must have reliable data that is updated regularly.- How often does the data get updated?
- What checks were done to ensure the data was accurate?
- Does the data come from a trusted source?
- Your Dashboard Is In a Secret Location
Users must understand where to find the dashboard and how they are expected to use it.- Do users have to click multiple links to find the dashboard?
- How are users made aware of updates?
- Did anyone provide initial training to the users?
A dashboard is a business investment and a useful executive management tool. Treat it as such.
Read the complete article here, with tips and tricks for solving this issue.
Credit: Data Science Central By: Tricia Aanderud
