What is a cooperative performance dashboard ?

Taking temperature has never cured anybody. However it remains essential to establish a diagnostic and lead to a good recovery.

• Management performance dashboard
• Control performance dashboard
• Quality performance dashboard
• Production performance dashboard
• CEO perfomance dashboard
• Project monitoring performance dashboard

For Industry, services (banks, insurances...), public services.

A cooperative performance dashboard is not a tool for testing...

Still too often, the key indicator is being used as a business report. Although it is supposed to make business monitoring placed under a person in charge's authority easier, it is more often used to check subordinates.
"How come you didn't reach this goal ? How can you explain it ?".
Used this way, it only triggers the following judgment : Congratulation or Blame.

It is not a tool to run a meeting...

It is also very common to pay more attention to the presentation's pure design than to its pertinence. So the quality of displayed facts is relagated to the background. This kind of use allows not to lose face during meetings but remains totally useless for decisions making....

It is not either a tool to make a statement of fact...

Dashboards aren't a recent creation. Used since the beginning of the XXth century, dashboards allowed then to make afterwards statements of facts about the pertinence of choices that had been made. The context being steady and the variations of the magnitude being small, it was always time to reoriente the strategy and refine the plans.
The major words in management were : SCHEDULE - PLAN - CHECK and the statement of fact perfectly came within this pattern. Unfortunately, although the context has changed a great deal, using dashboard as a tool to make a statement of fact is still going on. Indeed most dashboards in use nowadays are limited to comparison making between what has been scheduled and what has been done. They don't allow to react when it is still time to correct.
In our world of uncertainty and continuous change, it's not possible anymore to rely on this old fashioned principle. This conception needs to be reformed and a real management aid instrument has to be specified.

It is a decison-making aid instrument !

Let's go back over the definition of the cooperative performance dashboard by using the analogy of a car's dashboard. To drive your car, you need to see the road and to have at your disposal a certain number of indicators to help you apprehend problems to come. The combination of these instruments allows you to remain in control of your vehicle.
Would you be ready to take place in a car for a journey in the mountains with a driver who wouldn't take his eyes off the petrol jauge and the odometer. His only concern being to keep to his gas estimates. Certainly not.
However it's in this way that the large majority of dashboards in use in compagnies are thought out.

Let's not forget that we only pilot what we measure !

Why going on using an unsuitable measurement system ?

Nowadays, the need regarding decision-making aid is becoming crucial. It is a measurement system in accordance with the following pattern that has to be conceived to drive a company in an unsteady environment.

Instruction, Contraints, Disruptions, Pilot, System, Order, Measurement

Business Intelligence technology is from now on operational to build genuine cooperative performance dashboards. But as for every complex information system project, it is essential to make a point of managing the project carefully and adopting an appropriate approach to the problematic decision-making in companies.
This is the theme of this website.

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