Dashboards Vs Scorecards: A Perspective
The main reason why BI has been so successful is the emergence of scorecards and scorecards.
These tools digest large volumes of information and convey it in an intuitive format, making it easy to triage and respond to time-sensitive and critical events. They also help you explore issues and trends without getting completely lost in big reports or data.
If scorecards are supposed to be balanced, are scorecards innately unbalanced? What is the difference between scorecards and scorecards?
The popular concept seems to be that there is no difference. The terms are used interchangeably in most marketing collateral and performance articles. Perhaps there should be a distinction, since a scorecard for a college semester feels like it’s tackling a different problem than a car dashboard.
An example would make this distinction much easier. Consider a manager who is responsible for the customer service function in a large company.
Dashboard – Indicators
- Problem solving time: medium
- Problem Resolution Time – Average
- Percentage of issues resolved on first contact
- Percentage of issues resolved within a given time period
- Average result of the follow-up satisfaction survey
These measures look at a period of time (monthly or quarterly), against specific targets, either in absolute terms or improvements compared to a prior period.
Dashboard – Indicators
- Number of queued incoming calls
- Number of calls in escalation
- Current wait time for incoming calls
- Current wait time for escalations
- Current CSRs online
- Average call resolution time
- Waiting time expected in two hours
All metrics except Average Call Resolution Time would be displayed at the exact instant the dashboard is viewed or refreshed.
On the basis of this simple example, certain distinctions can be discerned:
- The scorecard can access the quality of execution, while the dashboards provide tactical guidance
- Scorecards are inherently measured against objectives. The panels do not need
Assembling Balanced Scorecards and Scorecards
Customer relationship dashboards use many metrics that give you data on how your team is operating, but provide little information on progress toward your goal of reaching maximum resolutions. It is measuring/monitoring, but not managing. Similarly, customer relationship dashboards present a quick picture of the strategy you should focus on to improve customer satisfaction, but lack the details of why you’re struggling to get top resolutions.
However, there are ways to ensure that dashboards include the critical connections to strategy. Once you’ve identified the problematic metric in the scorecard, you can drill down to the Top Resolutions dashboard that contains detailed metrics like average call resolution time, call queues, and wait time.