What is the difference between dashboards and scorecards

Software dashboards also offered the ability to drill through top-level information into supporting data. As they evolved, software dashboards became increasingly common as the user interface for individual applications such as ERP systems and web analytics packages.

Modern business dashboards are placing less emphasis on differentiating between scorecards and dashboards and paying more attention to the overlap between the two approaches. Ultimately, both scorecards and dashboards are concerned with measuring enterprise performance against pre-determined KPI metrics, and communicating this information in easily understood, interactive reports. Today it matters less whether you have a red metric on a scorecard or a declining graph on a dashboard than it does that different people can look at the same information, understand it at-a-glance, and then take immediate remedial action to correct the problem.

In the end, all that matters is that you have an effective system for translating top-level strategic goals into individual accountability and measuring progress against these goals in a timely manner. Maybe these amalgamated systems will be referred to as scoreboards? Define action plan according to the strategic objectives Contrast the Process of Usage The dashboard and the Balanced Scorecard are tactical and strategic tools respectively. Business system generates events. Performance of the process is calculated and presented in the form of measures 1.

Responsible employee follows business objectives from the strategy map 2. Operational dashboard visualizes measurements in the form of a chart, a diagram or a gauge 2.

Employee executes the action plan that is aligned to the specific business objective and it is measured with selected KPIs 3. If the performance of the process is not on the normal level, a dashboard generates notification to the responsible manager 3. KPI is reported to the Balanced Scorecard, its value is compared with target values and thresholds stop-lights : Update is displayed for the specific KPI Visualization of the changes on the strategy map and on KPI charts 4.

Responsible manager researches and follows cause and effect links to identify and fix the problem in a timely manner 4. The Users of a Dashboard and a Scorecard It is hard to distinguish who uses the dashboard and who uses the Balanced Scorecard.

Dig into Cause and Effect What happens when a supervisor receives a warning signal generated by a dashboard? Measure and KPI Although many sources tend to differentiate measures no target and KPIs with target , in practice most companies follow the idea of the KPI in the dashboard as well by assigning some synthetic benchmark. Dashboard helps to get an idea of how customer service is performing now:PROs: We can track current performance data Historical information is displayed for the metrics CONs: It is not clear how certain metrics contribute to the overall strategy The action plan for the KPIs is not displayed.

What's next? Access templates. Sign-up with a free plan at BSC Designer for immediate access to 30 scorecard templates, including Dashboard vs. Scorecard discussed in this article. Master skills.

Check out free video tutorial for the Balanced Scorecard. Master your strategy planning and execution skills with Strategy Execution training. Learn what Balanced Scorecard software is and how it can make your life easier by automating strategy execution, KPIs, and strategy maps. Strategy Map Wizard — Balanced Scorecard in 6 Minutes Answer simple questions - build a professional strategy map in 6 minutes. Strategy formulation and description might be a time-consuming project even for an experienced strategist.

This Strategy Scorecard Wizard will make the whole process fast and intuitive. Start now! Aleksey Savkin. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. The main benefit of the Scorecard is that it translates organizational strategy to operational processes. Each perspective contains several established objectives which are ideally monitored by 2 KPIs. On the other hand, Dashboards are a collection of graphs, charts, gauges or other visual representations that are used to monitor the levels of the selected KPIs.

The Dashboard is used for monitoring operational activities and is not necessarily directly linked with the strategic directions of a company. Moreover, the dashboard usually provides instant review of results and is constantly updated, while a scorecard is used for monitoring KPIs which are regularly reported on a monthly or quarterly basis.