Intelligent Operational Dashboards

In order to properly exploit the information on the progress status of the different opportunities, the first thing to do is create a repository, a central warehouse that collects all the data that we will analyze later.

This repository must be fed automatically from the commercial management systems. For this, it is not only necessary to communicate the computer applications, it is also necessary to carry out a preliminary definition task that specifies what information should be sent, in what format, with what frequency, etc.

The information from the repository is what feeds the Scorecard, with the appropriate filters to obtain the key indicators, the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators in English).

It is also the source for obtaining all the reports required by the commercial department, both periodic and specific, which are executed at the request of a user.

in addition to its commercial functionality, this dashboard it’s used in training and education solutions for managing communications and analyzing the different areas.

The main functionality of the dashboard is to facilitate the global vision of all opportunities, which is commonly known as the “Sales Funnel”. The main recipients of the scorecard are the middle managers, as well as the company management.

It is about that these users have the highest possible visibility on the state of the business. Also that they have it in a minimum time, in many cases it is even possible to obtain it at the moment (on-line).

In addition to “seeing” the progress status of sales, the dashboard also usually incorporates tools that make it possible to measure and contrast the results in progress with the forecasts and objectives set at the beginning of the commercial period, clearly showing the deviations (in case that there are).

The scorecard most used by companies is the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) or Balanced Scorecard (BSC), which organizes the indicators into 4 perspectives:

• Customer perspective – How do customers see us?
• The business inside – What should we excel at?
• That of innovation and learning – Can we continue to improve and create value?
• The financial perspective – How do we see ourselves in the eyes of shareholders?

Educative organizations also implement scoreboards that:

• Offer detailed reports wich allow the tracking the progress of the student in different areas.
• Allow the communication between teachers and students and vice versa.
• Notify teachers and students of new interactiones.
• Facilitate analysis of courses, lessons and their students.

Choose any of your business processes and represent them in a diagram, including all possible details: tasks, managers, times, resources used, etc. The most widely used methodology for the representation of processes is the BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation), which in Spanish we say Business Process Model and Notation.

Analyze the diagrams that you have represented, prior to the execution of the processes. Check first that they are a faithful representation of your processes, that there is nothing wrong. Then analyze if the sequence of tasks in front of you makes sense, for example, check if there are any tasks that are repeated in different parts of the process.

Finally, make the execution of your processes visible. For this, there are tools on the market that allow you to see the processes in real time: what task is running, what tasks have been executed and how long they have taken to do it, etc. If you don’t have that option, you can simply write down the fundamental metrics (KPIs) in the BPMN diagrams.

Many times we forget that a part of our processes is not executed directly by us, that is, our company, but is executed by third parties, mainly our suppliers and our clients.

Suppliers are an important link in our production chain, that is why we must include them in the BPMN diagrams that represent our processes, making an effort to also represent their metrics, especially the duration times of the tasks that they execute. Otherwise we will not be able to measure well or adequately estimate the delivery times of a product, for example.

Our clients are another important part of our processes, perhaps the most important. The delivery of a product is the culmination of the sales process and we must take great care of it. That is why we must include the circumstances of the delivery in our processes, such as the location and schedules. Sometimes our products are even delivered by an external carrier to our company and we must also include this information in our diagrams.

To carry out incremental process improvement, you start with bottlenecks, the points where “bottlenecks” occur or can occur. In fact, it is proven that the performance of a bottleneck is the performance of the entire process, since it cannot go faster than its slowest component.

To do this, during the process monitoring phase, we must obtain the statistical parameters of the execution and subsequently analyze them. Some of the points to pay special attention to are the following:

• Less flexible areas, where it is not easy to manage a sudden increase in workload.
• The most complex points of the process, for example the tasks that combine manual and automatic operation.
• The tasks of manual execution, since the variation of the workload must be associated with a variation of the personnel associated with said task, in the shortest possible time.
• The critical tasks in terms of the seriousness of the consequences of a possible failure in the execution of said tasks.

Once you have decided to “jump on” the Internet bandwagon, the first steps on your new path provide you with invaluable information on whether or not you are doing well.

That is why it is a good idea to have a section from the beginning for customers to write their comments and, of course, dedicate as much time as necessary.

An example: The first customers you get with your new offer, known as “Early Adopters”, are usually people who have a specific problem and who are looking for products or services that can solve them, often without caring too much about the price. Well, it turns out that most early adopters love to write about products and even write ideas for how they can be improved.

You should investigate which are the most successful factors of your new offer: the new products or services, the new ways of presenting them, the new customers they reach, etc.

Today there are powerful analysis tools that are, at the same time, affordable for a small or medium-sized company, which allow us to obtain important conclusions: on the number of visits to our website, on the response rate to our marketing campaigns, on the number of sales associated with those visits or campaigns, etc.

It may also be a good idea to review the web pages of the main companies of your competition, at least during the first weeks of your incorporation to the Internet, in case you perceive some changes associated with your new presence in the market.

You must use the data obtained to refine your strategy, to enhance all the factors that are obtaining success and to correct and modify those that are not obtaining it.

Important: You should not worry if you do not get it right the first time, you should try to refine your offer and keep trying. In fact, the information we get when something doesn’t go as well as we expected is many times more valuable than the information we get when everything goes smoothly.