The core of operational management lies in efficiency: through the design and control of operational processes, coordinating organizational resources to maximize the benefits of manpower, materials, and finances, thereby improving quality and profitability. To do this, it is essential to ensure access to the latest information. Operational dashboards, as popular business intelligence tools and real-time data analytics tools, can present vast amounts of data generated during operational processes in a visually appealing and easily understandable manner. Operational dashboards enable monitoring of key performance indicators (KPIs), metrics, and other relevant data.

Compared to other types of dashboards, the data in these dashboards is updated more frequently, sometimes even every minute. This allows organizations to better manage resources, reduce costs, optimize processes, and provide high-quality products and services, thereby enhancing competitiveness and achieving long-term business success.

Management guru Peter Drucker once said, “What you can measure you can manage.” This holds true when understanding the benefits of operational dashboards. Visualizing operational processes through dashboards ensures that each aspect operates in alignment with operational goals. Here are some key advantages:

• Supporting Efficient Management and Collaboration

Business owners, operations managers, and project stakeholders need to maintain control and stay ahead of issues. Access to real-time data and leading indicators helps identify emerging patterns and trends, eliminate inefficiencies and redundancies, and support quick decision-making required for businesses to remain competitive. Operational dashboards can centralize and coordinate strategic and tactical objectives, keeping everyone on the same page, which is crucial for streamlining workflows, optimizing resource allocation, and promoting collaboration among departments and teams, ultimately enhancing overall operational efficiency.

• Real-time Visibility

By analyzing and transforming real-time data from reliable sources into easily understandable visualizations, you can easily assess the health of your business and take appropriate actions. This enables proactive intervention and timely corrective measures to prevent potential problems from escalating. In-depth analysis capabilities allow understanding of root causes of issues and prompt issue resolution. Additionally, monitoring and reporting through mobile devices enable continuous monitoring, reducing response time.

• Facilitating Continuous Improvement in Every Activity

Operational management is about maximizing the value of limited resources through effective management. In this process, continuous optimization of business processes and gradual changes reduce waste, simplify work, and improve profitability, which forms the foundation of excellent operational management. Dashboards used to monitor business activities should be able to adapt to any changes required to improve performance and achieve higher levels of productivity, including customization and flexibility.

Strategic dashboards are used to monitor long-term organizational strategies with the help of key KPIs. They are typically complex to create, have enterprise-wide impact, and are primarily used by senior decision-makers. Next, let's analyze the differences between the two types of dashboards in terms of focus, timeframe, and audience:

1. Focus: Strategic dashboards focus on high-level, long-term goals and objectives of the organization. They provide a broad overview of performance across departments or business units. Strategic dashboards often include key performance indicators (KPIs) related to overall organizational performance, market trends, competitive analysis, and financial metrics. Operational dashboards, on the other hand, provide real-time or near-real-time insights into operational metrics, allowing managers and employees to monitor performance, identify bottlenecks, and take immediate action. The focus is also on KPIs relevant to specific operational areas, such as sales, production, or supply chain.

2. Timeframe:  In terms of timeframe, strategic dashboards look at performance over a longer period, typically spanning months or years. They assist senior executives and strategic decision-makers in evaluating progress toward strategic goals, making informed long-term decisions, and guiding the overall direction of the organization. Operational dashboards have a shorter timeframe, focusing on current or recent performance and providing real-time analysis and insights.

3. Audience:  Generally, strategic dashboards are designed for executives, senior management, or strategic decision-makers who require a high-level understanding of organizational performance and strategic alignment. On the other hand, operational dashboards cater to the needs of operations managers, frontline supervisors, or employees who require real-time insights into operational processes to monitor performance, identify bottlenecks, and make operational decisions.

Next, we will introduce several examples of operational dashboards applied in different fields.

Note: All the operational dashboard examples shown in this article are created by FineBI, a powerful BI tool that has been honourably mentioned by Gartner Magic Quadrant for ABI Platforms in 2023. You can download FineBI for free and have a try!

A Sales operational dashboard is a visual tool used to monitor and manage sales operations activities. It provides real-time and easy-to-understand sales analytics, helping enterprise management and sales teams better understand sales performance and market dynamics, enabling them to make timely adjustments to sales strategies and take action to achieve sales goals.

The dashboard collects and displays sales-related data and metrics, such as sales revenue, gross profit rate, sales growth rate, etc., to help enterprises understand sales performance, trends, and key indicators, supporting decision-making and action planning.

Ever wondered how businesses monitor and manage their marketing activities effectively? Well, that's where a Marketing operational dashboard comes into play. A Marketing operational dashboard serves as a centralized hub that consolidates key marketing metrics and data, typically including metrics such as leads and conversion rates, number of closed deals, return on investment (ROI), and more, depending on the industry. We present to you a marketing operational dashboard specifically tailored for the restaurant industry, featuring metrics such as complaint rate, customer conversation ratio, refund rate, and others on a single page. This allows the marketing team to monitor and assess the impact of their strategies effectively, optimize marketing spend, identify underperforming areas, and make data-driven decisions to drive business growth.

The dashboard facilitates effective communication and collaboration across departments, ensuring that marketing efforts align with overall business objectives. Ultimately, businesses can improve marketing efficiency, enhance customer acquisition and retention, and maximize their return on marketing investments.

Financial data is crucial for any business, and a financial operational dashboard serves as a business intelligence tool that consolidates and presents key financial data in a clear and accessible format. It enables finance and accounting teams to visually represent, monitor, and present essential financial key performance indicators (KPIs). This aids businesses in conducting financial analysis, budgeting, and forecasting, supporting strategic decision-making and goal setting.

Furthermore, it enhances transparency and accountability within the organization, as relevant stakeholders can easily access financial information. Modern dashboards go beyond basic visualization and reporting by utilizing financial analysis to merge different financial and accounting data, allowing analysts to delve deeper into the data and discover valuable insights that can optimize cost efficiency and enhance profitability.

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A Supply chain operational dashboard is a valuable interactive dashboard that enables businesses to gain visibility and control over their supply chain execution and broader operations. Its importance lies in the ability to effectively monitor, analyze, and manage supply chain activities. By tracking key supply chain metrics and execution KPIs, businesses can optimize processes, reduce costs, and improve overall supply chain performance, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction and strengthening market competitiveness.

Some key indicators commonly included in a Supply chain operational dashboard are inventory levels, order fulfillment cycle time, supply chain execution metrics, on-time delivery rate, and transportation costs. Collaboration and communication among supply chain stakeholders can also be facilitated through this digital dashboard, enabling them to work together to optimize processes, reduce costs, and ensure smooth flow of goods and services.

The Electricity Power Plant Monitoring Dashboard is a data visualization tool used for real-time monitoring and management of power plant operations. It gathers and displays various key indicators and data, including real-time power generation, grid stability, fuel consumption, and efficiency. This tool assists enterprise managers and engineers in tracking the performance and efficiency of power plants, improving operational efficiency, reducing downtime, and ensuring reliable and stable power supply while optimizing power plant operations.

Enterprises utilize the Electricity Power Plant Monitoring Dashboard for timely fault detection and prevention, real-time tracking of energy consumption and efficiency, and identifying potential energy waste to take appropriate measures for energy conservation and optimization. It provides data-driven decision support for management, enabling them to develop sound strategies and plans to enhance overall operational effectiveness.

A Manufacturing Dashboard is a real-time, visual representation of the entire manufacturing process or production facility. Data cards, charts, tables, and other visualization techniques help monitor the most critical production Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at a central access point. It enables manufacturers to track and optimize production quality and serves as a valuable analytical tool for effective management of all relevant manufacturing costs.

In the manufacturing industry, dealing with vast amounts of data is crucial as it can determine the success or failure of an organization. The Manufacturing Dashboard organizes data from machines, sensors, equipment, and workers into easily readable, readily available content that can be displayed throughout the shop floor. As a result, decision-makers can make informed decisions regarding production planning, resource allocation, and process optimization.

The Retail Operational Dashboard is used to monitor and manage the operational performance of retail businesses. It assists retail enterprises in real-time tracking of key operational indicators such as sales, inventory, and customer experience to support decision-making and business optimization. The Retail Operational Dashboard we provide integrates multiple key metrics and data, presenting a comprehensive view of retail operations for decision-makers to understand overall business performance and trends. It offers functionalities including real-time data visualization, comprehensive view, instant alerts, and anomaly detection, enabling businesses to achieve real-time operational monitoring, performance evaluation and optimization, operational efficiency improvement, and customer experience enhancement.

Creating a dashboard is not just an isolated task but closely related to an organization's overall strategic plan. The following five steps can help you create an insightful operational dashboard:

The first step in creating an operational dashboard is establishing business objectives that are relevant to the specific operational and process areas. Pay attention to this step as all other stages depend on it. What specific insights or information do you want to gain? Identify key metrics that are measurable and directly related to your business performance and success.

Operational dashboard tools are comprehensive platforms that include data integration and analysis capabilities, enabling convenient integration of data sets from various departments within the organization, such as databases, spreadsheets, or specialized software systems. FineBI is a tool that supports multi-source data preparation, including popular databases like Hsql, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, and Oracle. Ensure data accuracy, real-time updates, and relevance to your objectives. Clean and organize the data to make it suitable for in-depth analysis.

Select an appropriate visualization tool based on your data types and the insights you want to convey. There are many options available, ranging from basic Excel to more advanced dashboard tools like FineBI, Tableau, Power BI, or Google Data Studio. Choose a tool that fits your needs and has the capability to create interactive and visually appealing dashboards. Here are some key points to consider when selecting a suitable visualization tool:

• Functionality and features: Ensure that the visualization tool has the core functionality and features you need. For example, diverse chart types (bar charts, line charts, pie charts, etc.), interactivity (filtering, zooming, navigation, etc.), dynamic updates, and real-time data support.
• User-friendliness: Evaluate the usability and user interface of the visualization tool. Choose an intuitive and easy-to-understand tool that allows you to quickly get started and customize settings without requiring excessive technical expertise.
• Scalability and customization: Look for software solutions that allow flexible design and customization of dashboards. This enables you to tailor the dashboard to your specific requirements and present information in visually appealing and intuitive ways. Check if the tool supports plugins, extensions, or API development, and whether it can meet your future expansion and customization needs.
• Support and community: Review the support documentation, forums, and community around the visualization tool. Ensure there are sufficient support resources available for reference, and an active user community where you can share experiences and problem-solving.

Here, we highly recommend trying FineBI. In terms of visualization capabilities, FineBI comes with 50+ built-in chart types and custom chart types, covering a wide range of basic and advanced charts available in the market. FineBI's interactive features are also powerful, allowing easy implementation of slicing, linking, jumping, and drilling to make the analysis dynamic. 

With a user-friendly interface similar to Excel, FineBI offers simple drag-and-drop operations that are easy to grasp. Even non-IT business users can independently perform analysis. FineBI provides comprehensive documentation and resources, ensuring a low learning curve.

Plan and design the layout and structure of your dashboard. Organize key metrics and charts in a logical and meaningful way, enabling users to quickly obtain information. Ensure visualizations are clear, easy to understand, and accurately convey the meaning and insights of the data. Use appropriate colors, labels, and legends to enhance visual readability. Consider incorporating navigation and filtering functionalities in the dashboard to allow users to explore data and switch views based on their needs.

Current business intelligence dashboards in the market often lack monitoring alerts for potential risks or analysis of historical data, which weakens an organization's ability to respond to risks. Therefore, modern business intelligence dashboards need to have alert and prediction capabilities.

FineBI provides trend lines and alert lines to present trends in charts and generate alerts for anomalous indicators. Additionally, FineBI offers scheduled notifications. When the alert conditions are triggered, it can notify users via email, SMS, platform messages, etc., and provide analysis templates, enabling users to perform timely analysis and decision-making.

Remember that creating an operational dashboard is an iterative process. It may take some time to refine and improve your dashboard based on user feedback and changing business needs. Regularly review and update your metrics and visualizations to keep your dashboard relevant and valuable.

Operational dashboards are valuable assets that can help businesses stand out in today's competitive digital landscape. Therefore, don't miss out on the opportunity to enhance operational monitoring and drive business growth. Try FineBI now and unleash the full potential of your data with its comprehensive features and seamless functionality. Experience the transformative impact it can have on streamlining operations and achieving your business objectives.