Business Dashboards- Challenges and Recommendations

Business Dashboards have become an important Business Intelligence (BI) tool available to managers and executives to monitor various aspects of organizational functioning including continuous performance monitoring. Similar to the dashboard on a car that shows the current status of the trip and monitors vital statistics of the car, business dashboards can offer realtime information about the organization and aid in better managerial decision-making and agility. Business dashboards are a fairly recent phenomenon and, as a result, offer several challenges and opportunities. This research examines characteristics of dashboards as a tool that should have a unique place when compared to other BI tools. It discusses some issues related to dashboards and puts forward some suggestions/recommendations. It uses a post-implementation survey for a dashboard implementation, conducted in a regional North American bank to support the issues and recommendations proposed in this research.