Dashboards Vs Scorecards: A Perspective
The main reason why BI has been so successful is the emergence of dashboards and scorecards.
These tools digest large volumes of information and convey it in an intuitive format, making it easy to classify and respond to critical and time-sensitive events. They also help explore issues and trends without getting completely lost in big reports or data.
If scorecards are supposed to be balanced, are scorecards innately unbalanced? What is the difference between dashboards and scorecards?
The popular concept seems to be that there is no difference. The terms are used interchangeably in most marketing warranties and performance items. Perhaps there should be a distinction, since a scorecard for a college semester feels like it’s tackling a different problem than a dashboard for a car.
An example would make this distinction much easier. Consider a manager who is responsible for the customer service function at a large company.
Dashboard – Indicators
- Problem Resolution Time – Medium
- Problem Resolution Time – Average
- Percentage of issues resolved on first contact
- Percentage of issues resolved within a given time period
- Average result of the follow-up satisfaction survey
These measures look at a period of time (monthly or quarterly), against specific targets, either in absolute terms or improvements compared to a previous period.
Dashboard – Indicators
- Number of incoming calls in queue
- Number of escalated calls
- Current wait time for incoming calls
- Current timeout for escalations
- Current CSRs online
- Average call resolution time
- Expected waiting time in two hours
All metrics except average call resolution time would be displayed at the exact instant the dashboard is viewed or refreshed.
On the basis of this simple example, certain distinctions can be discerned:
- The scorecard can access execution quality, while dashboards provide tactical guidance
- Scorecards are inherently measured against goals. Panels do not need
Assembling Balanced Scorecards and Dashboards
Customer relationship dashboards use a lot of metrics that give you data on how your team is operating, but give little insight into your progress toward your goal of reaching maximum resolutions. It is measuring/monitoring, but not managing. Similarly, customer relationship dashboards present a quick picture of the strategy you should be focusing on to improve customer satisfaction, but lack details on why you’re struggling to achieve top resolutions.
However, there are ways to ensure that dashboards include the critical connections to strategy. Once you’ve identified the problematic metric on the dashboard, you can drill down to the maximum resolutions dashboard that contains detailed metrics such as average call resolution time, call queues, and hold time.