show me the answer: dashboarding and kpis tangible data 15 th october 2008

Show me the Answer: Dashboarding and KPIs

Tangible Data

15th October 2008

Some questions for you

Do you know what a dashboard is? Do you currently have a dashboard in operation? Is your dashboard working well? Are you looking to implement a dashboard in the next 12

months?

Who this session is aimed at

Fundraising analysts with little or no experience of creating dashboards & KPIs

People who have developed a dashboard and would like to pick up some industry best practice

Aimed at the people who are tasked with building or improving the dashboard Rather than the audience who use them

What this session is not Not a review of what’s new in cutting edge software Not a review of interactive reporting and analytics, OLAP Data

Mining, reporting suites, Web-based analysis, etc.

Show Me the Answer: Agenda

Context What exactly is a dashboard?

What’s the Answer... Knowing your audience Getting the information right

... And how do you Show it? How not to show it: common mistakes Examples of successful dashboards

Best practice guide to building a dashboard

Appendix: some further useful slides for you

Context

What exactly is a dashboard?

Some recent history – where does dashboarding come from

What are the main issues?

Recent History

Dashboards evolved out of the growing ‘information overload’ of computerisation

A new evolution of an existing business concept Executive Information Systems (1980s) OLAP (online analytical processing) & business intelligence in the

1990s Key Performance Indicators (often synonymous!) Balanced Scorecards (Kaplan and Norton) are a textbook favourite:

4 key areas on one page financial measures: revenue, profit etc. customers: customer satisfaction etc. internal activity: efficiency innovating and learning: process improvement

What exactly is a dashboard?

Stephen Few: Intelligent Dashboard Design (2006)

Visual Display

Of the most important information(..to achieve one or more objectives)

Fits entirely on a single computer screen

Can be monitored at a glance

Life before Dashboards (Does this sound familiar?).....

Usually: Senior business user X approaches the analyst... ‘I want to see...’ (and I need it Now)

Analyst produces report in the time available Not very beautiful – and not a real KPI report: Business User

‘What does this mean? / Actually I really needed...’

Over time user(s) asks for many different KPIs Result many different (inconsistent?) Excel/ Access/ Web reports

Managers’ solution ‘We really need to purchase X software, solve all our dashboarding problems’

....What are the issues here?

Two separate issues around dashboarding:

What to dashboard Which metrics / Key Performance Indicators, at what level, for

what reason: reviewing the KPIs as a whole What’s the Answer?

How to display it How to make the KPIs immediately comprehensible How to Show it

What’s the Answer....

Getting the information right: bringing in the stakeholders

What’s the Answer: defining the KPIs This section just covers how to define the KPIs:

specific examples of KPIs will be mentioned later

Who is your (internal) customer? Individual department managers, executive board, managing

director only, etc.

Defining the KPIs is an analysis project... Analyst time & resource put aside Business user time & resource put aside

.... which never really ends e.g. Marketers keep finding new & innovative solutions to

fundraise Marketing KPIs need to evolve with the marketers

Analysts: It is your problem to work out what is in the report The analyst is not just the production machine Business users know their business very well –

but need your help in communicating the rightmetrics

How can you work out what to include? Ask your customers what they want to know?

What’s the Answer: defining the KPIs Analysts: It is your problem to work out what is in

the report The analyst is not just the production machine Business users know their business very well –

How can you work out what to include? Ask your customers what they want to know? ..... They want to

know Everything Follow the strategic targets – but may need more or less in the

main dashboard “What are your top 3 areas of concern/ areas to track?” “How would you use information about X” -> defines whether to

show volume or value, acquisition or retention, etc.

Getting the numbers right Interpreting and querying the database correctly: can you reach all

the data sources? Getting the numbers to match what the business thought it had Matching other (lower-level) reports

Computer says no? You’re not reporting what’s in the database, you’re reporting what’s in the business ....

“Actually we include all recruits who responded to source code xxxx as Direct Recruits” so the Direct Recruits metric needs to incorporate that.

.....Although sometimes KPIs flag up practices that are divorced from reality “Oh we always estimate these supporters as current unless we have a ‘stop flag’”

....maybe a separate analysis to get a more realistic picture?

What’s the Answer: defining the KPIs

... And how do you Show it?

How not to show it: Common mistakes

Good Practice examples

You Are Not The Audience People who design the dashboards focus on the look & feel

Beautiful & sophisticated charting & ‘fuel gauge’ representation etc. People who read dashboards are really interested in the numbers

“If the statistics are boring, then you’ve got the wrong numbers” (Edward Tufte)

How not to show it: Too clever

3D Charting does not help here (Top L.H. chart)

No need to have so many different jolly colours

How not to show it: Too detailed Excessive detail in the overall dashboard..

... or the individual chart is just confusing

Make sure you use the right chart (see Appendix)

How not to show it: Too busy

Stick to consistent styles & backgrounds Introducing meaningless variety or complex tools doesn’t help

Also: Visual displays can still be misinterpreted If the chart trend looks serious, telling managers it’s not actually as

serious as it looks doesn’t always work

What do these gauges tell us?

Good practice examples

Good practice: Context & commentary Some context is essential

Explains (excuses?) anomalies & provides sound bites But minimal: do not overuse (Put detail in the cover note)

Good practice examples

Not all interesting designs are wrong!

Best practice guide to developing a dashboard

Dashboarding approaches

There is a plethora of dashboarding tools and software in the market

Excel is a great place to start if you own no other dashboarding software Best to try out an existing Excel dashboard on your own data Many different free or cheap downloads Powerful capabilities and flexible data manipulation: very good

display capabilities But keep best practices in mind, avoid the defaults, avoid things like

3D charts, bright colours, and pie charts And consider data security and access control

Think through the end results.... What will it need to show?

Who will need to look at it?

What decisions are they likely to take?

How are they likely to react?

“everything’s going well, no need to worry”

“everything’s going well, no need to worry”

“you’re measuring it the wrong way”

“you’re measuring it the wrong way”

“why are they going down?”

“why are they going down?”

“you’ve got the figures wrong

“you’ve got the figures wrong

The 3 Ps Plan

Link into Strategic Plan wherever possible – use same metrics Are those metrics clearly defined? – if not, define Base the dashboard around these metrics

Performance Show how you’re performing In particular over time – typically on a monthly basis Showing YTD and comparisons with last year, as appropriate So you can easily see – will you meet targets?

Pointers Explanations of your current performance Why are you over- or under-performing? Albeit keep the detail in subsequent pages

Visualising information Charts

Great for showing key performance measures over time Trends Keep simple! – if getting too complex, use......

...tables and numbers Great for showing greater detail Or the numbers on which the charts are based

Words At the top of the page! Demands to be read! The most important messages Great for including the Pointers i.e. explaining the trends in the charts

Giving the dashboard a bit of zip

Speedometers Comprises half a

doughnut chart A miniscule slice

of a pie-chart The outside bit of a

speedo photo grabbed from the Web

and a simple Up/ Down control in Excel

And a lot of imagination... to give you this!

Also see http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/SpeedometerXP.html

Space for text/ commentary

http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/SpeedometerXP.html

Temperature gauges

Traffic lights

Tangible: data

Using Excel to make your dashboard look like a dashboard

A couple of NFP examplesAverage Last cash gift of current ad hoc donors (£)

Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar

Average latest Ad Hoc gift this year (£) 15£ 15£ 15£ 15£ 14£

Average latest Ad Hoc gift last year (£) 11£ 11£ 11£ 12£ 12£ 12£ 12£ 14£ 15£ 16£ 16£ 15£

Percentage of Current Donors who are Gift Aided


% Current Regular Gift Aided this year (volume %) 65% 65% 65% 65% 65%

% Current Regular Gift Aided last year (volume %) 63% 63% 63% 63% 63% 63% 63% 63% 64% 64% 64% 64%

% Current Ad Hoc Gift Aided this year (volume %)

56% 56% 57% 57% 56%

% Current Ad Hoc Gift Aided last year (volume %)

39% 42% 43% 44% 46% 47% 47% 51% 53% 53% 54% 55%

Number of Legacy supporters on file


Legacy pledgers on file this year 15 16 16 16 16 16

Legacy intenders on file this year 5 5 5 5 5 5

Legacy enquirers on file this year 48 48 48 49 49 50

Legacy pledgers on file last year 14 14 14 14 15 15 15 15 15 15 15 15

Legacy intenders on file last year 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

Legacy enquirers on file last year 44 44 44 45 45 45 46 46 46 47 47 47

Last Year

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Legacy pledgers on file this year Legacy intenders on file this yearLegacy enquirers on file this year

What are the 10 areas of my business that are most important to me? e.g. Regular givers Ad hoc donors Legacy marketing Events Fundraising Membership Raffle supporters

What sorts of things do I want to know about them? Recruitment rates Net growth Tracking volume, value % Attrition Cross-/up-selling Total Annual value Gift aiding Mail order purchase

Venn Diagrams are useful for supporter file overlaps Stacked bars give total volumes & broken down

A couple of NFP examples

Any Questions?

Julian Foxon 01285 883 783

Georgina Spary 01285 883 779

Tangible DataPart of the Cello Group

The Old MuseumTetbury RoadCirencesterGL7 1UP01285 644220www.tangibledata.co.uk

“experienced, high-calibre staff with all round knowledge of statistical

techniques, presented in an accessible, jargon-free,

client-friendly manner”

“down to earth, approachable yet

knowledgeable data experts”

“a huge resource - able to help us with any data issue whether how to write SPSS syntax, where to source additional data, how to approach

an analysis task. All that and a light-hearted yet professional, relaxed yet efficient, proactive yet no-pressure

approach to our relationship.”

Appendix: additional useful slides

More on how to Show it

Business Intelligence Tools available

Step-by-Step guide to dashboarding

Other sources to research

More on how to Show it

Stephen Few again:

“The greatest display technology in the world won't solve [the information overload problem] if you fail to use effective visual design.

And if a dashboard fails to tell you precisely what you need to know in an instant, you'll never use it, even if it's filled with cute gauges, meters, and traffic lights.”

More on how to Show it: Charts

e.g. How do we show growth of the supporter base – a pie chart?.... This chart is very busy and hard to interpret. Pie charts show splits of a file or group We want to show a trend – progression year on year

Volume of customers recruited by year

Pre 1982 1982-19861987-1992 19921993 19941995 19961997 19981999 20002001 20022003 20042005 20062007 Unknown


... A line graph? This gives a bit more information But line graphs are usually used to show a trend in behaviour (e.g.

renewals rate) We want to show a trend in volumes or different types of volumes


-

20,000

40,000

60,000

80,000

100,000

120,000

Pre 1

982

1987

-199

219

9319

9519

9719

9920

0120

0320

0520

07


... A bar chart? A bar chart is the appropriate format to convey this information But we really want to show a cumulative trend....


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20,000

40,000

60,000

80,000

100,000

120,000

Pre 1

982

1987

-199

219

9319

9519

9719

9920

0120

0320

0520

07


... A cumulative bar chart with annotations will do This clearly shows the slowing growth trend: titles have been added and

formatted, and brand colours added The early part of the data (years1980-1993) has been omitted for ease of

interpretation Little growth in the early years – can be mentioned in a footnote

Growth of customer base 1995- 2007

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Note: Includes all customers w hether active or cancelled subscriptions.

More on how to Show it: Interactivity

Interactivity is most useful when it allows the user to perform ad hoc queries -> this makes the report a data mining tool not a dashboard

Some dashboards have interactive filters (to squeeze several different reports onto ‘one’ screen) -> not really an at-a-glance one page comparison In practice the business will select out the top 3-4 preferred views

and cobble together their dashboard “Let’s go straight to Page 17” ... how useful are pages 1-16?

show me the answer: dashboarding and kpis tangible data 15 th october 2008

Documents

stakeholders slide

glance slide

dashboard appendix

different kpis

dashboards kpis people

intelligent dashboard

kpis tangible data

specific examples of