How can data dashboards be used to track progress towards organizational goals?

Organization goals should resemble the Organization Long term Vision and Mission statements. In order to have better understanding. Each and every employee who is working in the organization should aware of it. Most organizations should develop a system in creating awareness.

Although organisational goals are a must have for every organisation and a powerful communication tool both internally and external, they often require translation into more manageable goals/KPI's to make them easily measurable and understandable for people working in your organisation. When doing so, outcomes can be translated into specific goal an organisation has in relation to its data.

In health settings the goals can be diverse from strenghtening prevention measures, sustainability of resources, evident. These goals are cannot be individual achieve, it requires a tram collaboration with the organization staff and its partners, therefore if ti always vital to have organization goals communication to all and be distributed to the different section within health departments to ensure that the priority activities will be able to acheived the goals and also it guides which partner can assist for the different areas.

Every organisation will have its own vision, in some cases it could be an ambition or even a possible milestone and all gets associated with a timeline. They are usually bounded with core values at organisational level but usually gets drilled down to employee level as goals. An typical organisational goals should have a lineage from top-executive level till the lower-most employee level as this will provide clarity and transparency across the organisation to understand and work towards these goals.

Organizational Goals help provide direction, focus, and a sense of purpose for the organization and its members. Organizational goals can vary widely depending on the nature and purpose of the organization. They are specific objectives that an organization sets for itself to achieve over a defined period of time.

Goals can be anything that the founding or executive team at the organization decides is part of the company's mission-statement.As a company You can't move ahead as a singular unit without access to a unifying force which can come across in the form of some common targets or organizational goals

Organizational goals are the specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound outcomes an organization aims to achieve within a defined timeframe and available resources. These goals span diverse areas like finance, operations, customer satisfaction, employee well-being, and societal impact. Aligned with the organization's vision, mission, and values, these goals provide a strategic roadmap, guiding the organization towards success. SMART criteria ensure these goals are well-defined, realistic, and essential in steering the organization toward continuous growth and alignment with its core purpose.

Having a single source of truth is most important. If multiple "realities" are able to form within an organisation then progress becomes significantly harder. Better to have a single source of truth that is imperfect and continually improve it.

For every decided Goals should have a Key Metric to know the performance like are we in the zone of ON track or OFF track. If it's not going good. Business heads should look in revising strategies to push back to plan. Focus on existing plan and identify the bottlenecks to improvise better. So we need data dashboards for sure.

Visibility of the progress you are making is essential to be able to readjust in case you goals need additional work to be achieved or slowed down as to not overshoot the desired target goal. Although overshooting a goal is often not seen as problematic, it can be considered to be a problem as organisational resources are limited by definition and possibly could have been deployed elsewhere more effective.

Data dashboards serve as vital tools for tracking organizational progress. They centralize key metrics, offering real-time insights for immediate action and decision-making. Spotting trends and issues becomes easier, enabling better alignment with goals. Tools like Power BI offer advanced analytics for deep data understanding. You can easily compare actual performance against targets to evaluate strategy effectiveness. Dashboards are also excellent communication tools for stakeholders, providing a snapshot of both achievements and areas needing focus. They serve as a bridge between strategic plans and execution, helping organizations identify where to improve.

A picture is better than thousand words. We are visual being and remember easily when you see a picture rather than only text. So, Dashboards use charts, graphs, and visual elements to represent data, making it easier to interpret and understand complex data. Visualizations can highlight trends, outliers, and patterns that might be less apparent in raw data.

Its helps the organization to understand its progress to achieve its goals and also identifies where the gaps or weakness are that requires urgent changes to ensure that the organization can continue to move forward with its goals.

Goal setting is one side of the coin, but the other side is how well we as an organisation progressing towards it - Metrics or Key performance indicators (KPIs) are defined to measure the progress and a dashboard will help us to visualize this in a more effective and timely way. They can help us to drive both reactive and proactive way to focus on certain areas that needs steer and support. For Senior Executive reporting, this data dashboard is a handy way to present periodical reports.

Whether we like it or not;the world around us is more perceptible of visual inputs than it is of text and columns of data. Having data dashboards in place means you can connect most effectively with all stakeholders in your organization & very easily track progress on any initiative/project you are currently working on.

It's the only way to know you're getting things done and making logical business decisions. Without data dashboards, you're just guessing. Which leads to inaccuracies and unknown risks.

It varies from organization to organization and no particular method is constant. Let's say for Customer complaints KPIs we should have a dashboard which shows the number of complaints getting for each customer on Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly. As a business head I should take the control and identify areas to improve like which complaints are high/low, Repeated customer complaints. Should design the dashboard by covering KPIs which satisfy the Goals of a Business.

Understanding your audience's needs is key to effective design. Are you publishing the dashboard to the entire organization? Is it purely an "information radiator", or will it be used to explore the data and create meaningful insight? The intended audience and purpose can help drive your dashboard design to be purpose -built.

When designing data dashboards various perspectives on how goals are reached (and their associated KPI's) should be included in a dashboard providing a balanced view (i.e., using a balanced scorecard approach) when it comes to the question of what to show. When determining how to show the results of the various KPI’s, different types of visualisations should be considered based on what the audience needs to see to make effective decisions.

Designing dashboards for tracking progress starts with identifying clear organizational goals and KPIs. Choose reliable data sources and tools like Power BI for data collection and visualization. Opt for chart types and layouts that best represent your KPIs, keeping the design clean and easy to read. Interactivity, such as filters and drill-down options, enhances user engagement and data exploration. Always consider your audience; tailor elements to be as intuitive as possible for them. Before finalizing, rigorously test the dashboard's accuracy and usability. Make it a habit to regularly update and refine the dashboard to keep it relevant and aligned with organizational needs.

I would say it varies across different organization. For health, the dashboard would be to project trend of diseases overtime and inject where public health measures has been inforce to see if changes occures in the trends. For NCD, projecting the disease burden and the risk factors would be beneficial to both the health care system itself and the communities to see if there is enough awareness on the risk factors and if communities are adjusting lifestyle behaviours. We would also like to know the number of staff progress this might be of internal but it will really assist with Health Resources allocation inckuding where staff can be recruited to which locations and depending on area of expertise and where burden of health system is high.

The "Why" factor helps us to define the purpose/need of the data dashboard and the "What" factors determines what we need to show in the dashboard and "How" factor is about how to develop this dashboard. Based on the user-level, the KPIs and metrics to be displayed at different granular level and the UI/UX is key based on which the color pallete, chart types and fonts will enrich the accessibility aspect of this dashboard. A dedicated data engineering team will build the data pipelines connecting various data sources and the visualization team builds the dashboard, and all these will be co-ordinated by a business analyst, project manager and testers in an agile way.

Designing a data dashboard to track progress requires a combination of understanding the needs of the end-users, the key metrics to be tracked, and the best visualization methods. A well-designed dashboard should provide clarity, be easy to understand, and allow users to make data-driven decisions efficiently.

Dashboard is a means of communication. Aside from choosing KPIs, proper graphs, color scheme, and others, since this is part of communication scheme of an organization the developers must be aware of its audience. As part of preparation, a communication plan must be in place to cover what specific KPIs, charts, and other visualization based on specific audience needs.

Using data dashboards to track progress involves setting a review schedule that aligns with business cycles and stakeholder needs. Regular check-ins allow you to keep a pulse on data trends and anomalies, facilitating timely adjustments to strategies. In tools like Power BI, you can set up automated alerts for key metrics, enabling proactive measures. Use the dashboard not just as a tracking tool but also as a communication medium. Share updates with stakeholders to celebrate wins and collectively address challenges. Frequent review and open communication foster continuous improvement, making the dashboard an active tool for organizational success.

Publishing the dashboard in a commonly- accessible location can help radiate information as well. Allowing all internal groups to view current progress whenever they choose and can help motivate them towards the organizational goals.

It's a Proactive step not a reactive step. Based on the past data dashboards we can also identify the potential complaints. So business heads can decision of revising the process what's going wrong in it and make it better. Dashboards should be easily accessible to the users like Web display at process, Mobile application, CRM softwares and many more.

Sharing dashboards is the initial step to allow for progress tracking. However, although progress checking has its merits, active adjustments based on progress is much more valuable. Being able to do this not only requires the tracking of progress (backward-looking) but also including forecasts (forward looking) to see if goals will be reached on time.

Dashboards are highly dependent to proper data management. Ensuring completeness and accuracy of data must be in place on a timely basis because as much as possible, the dashboards must be updated on a real-time basis since showing progress prompts action from stakeholders and the project management.

Dynamic dashboards appear to be preferred when reporting upwards but static snapshots or time point reporting of key metrics are in my opinion more valuable. Data is critical to collect and measure over time and without previous points in time to compare the current to the past, how can one measure improvement.

1- Identify Key Metrics , Set Benchmarks , Choose the right Visualization 2- Consistent Update & Monitoring , Analysis & Interpretation 3- Reviewing 4- Feedback Request

A better example for a Dashboard can be like Operations Dashboard. It should have a key important KPIs of SALES, REVENUE, ORDERS, PROFIT, PRODUCTS. Each Metric has a definite meaning for a business. It should be tracked on defined time intervals and fix it. In this case if the sales are not happening and revenue goes down directly which in turn reduces the number of orders from customers. All the KPIs are directly or indirectly related to each other. Having an glmpse on each factor plays a crucial role for a business.

Dashboard for project management office is one example of tracking progress dashboards, with drill down functionalities to drill down to tasks level data to facilitates monitor project performance closely which is a part of organization programs that contribute to the enterprise goals.

Good data dashboards and their effective use depends heavily on choosing (and subsequent display) of the right metrics. It is therefore important to have a proper discussion on this topic with business stakeholders and subject matter experts.

I’ve found dashboards to be invaluable to the public library system. Performance metrics can be evaluated and compared at a glance, enabling informative budgetary decisions and isolating unique grant funding opportunities.

I have used Workboard for quite sometime and it is a great utility to provide cool infographics, lineage and progress about various organisational objectives with key measures tagged at various organisational levels. I have also seen a PowerBI dashboard depicting the OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) for an sub-organisational unit, which was bit user friendly as we could be able to export the data points at ease, as and when needed.