Performance dashboards and scorecards can help you spot what's really important

Dashboards fulfill this need by letting more members of an organization monitor critical information; analyze and explore performance data; and communicate and collaborate effectively. Conventionally, organizations have tried to gain these capabilities with BI reports and spreadsheets — a flawed practice at best. Users have had to get in line for IT analysts to create the reports; then, if users need data outside their realm, they must go to individual department heads to find and incorporate that data in haphazard fashion. Finally, typical procedures give IT organizations little chance of maintaining data quality.

Dashboards provide a stronger measure of control while allowing greater data visibility and access. Dashboards increasingly are paired with scorecards, which supply key performance indicators and metrics to help an organization understand how it's doing against key objectives. Balanced scorecards equilibrate financial performance with other measures, such as customer satisfaction and employee learning and growth.

Scorecards succeed or fail with the quality of their metrics. Thus, organizations must develop metrics carefully, collaboratively and with room for flexibility to improve and refine them over time.