Most small business do not have a dashboard that management & employees can look to see their key goal and activity results on a daily basis. Most don’t know what a dashboard is or why it is important. Such a simple data window can make a significant difference on whether a business succeeds or fails. As the name suggests, a small business dashboard functions just like your car dashboard. It is simply an all-in-one information page that helps you monitor key business information such as sales, operations, financials, marketing or anything your leadership team deems a key metric to measure progress toward key business objectives. A dashboard will assist you in guiding decisions and better navigating the surrounding landscape.
So as a small business owner, I believe it’s very important to future success to focus some time on finding the right tools to manage your business. Otherwise, you’re most likely going to lose time and resources unnecessarily – but most importantly, you’re going to lose opportunities. Opportunities which your competitors might be on to. I always like to say “you cannot manage what you cannot measure”. Not having visibility to key metrics of your status or results leads to poor or untimely decisions in your business. A dashboard allows you to stay on track and spot situations that need focus or correction rather quickly.
Each company is unique and different and so will be your dashboard. As a real life example, I offer you one of my dashboard cases. One of my small businesses is a company managing real estate residential property. The lifeline of this business is occupancy and the goal is to keep it as close as possible to 100%. However, you will always have departing tenants due to expiring leases. A well laid out dashboard will indicate your current occupancy or vacancies, but it will also tell you the upcoming vacancies. Why? Because by having a look ahead you can initiate those business activities that will minimize the number of vacant days by scheduling the make ready work and the kickoff of the marketing for that particular property. Having this dashboard and having the team keep it up to date on a daily basis allows themselves to stay on top of their own activities. Maintaining the dashboard tool alone does wonders for keeping the business focused on the right tasks day after day.
Our company Highland Force offers professionals who can develop your dashboard based on the company goals and needs. We are a staffing firm hiring international remote workers from Latin America. We do this because it enables your company to get the services for up to 70% less than if you hire within the US. Our professionals are trained in a variety of core business areas.
Contact us at www.highlandforce.com
Emerich Esqueda
Founder & Owner
Highland Force Staffing
Hi, thank you for the information. My company is just starting and I would like some help with some processes. Do I need a special software to create the dashboard or can I do it in MS Excel?
Joe, if you are just starting out, MS Excel is perfectly fine to begin your dashboard. You may also want to consider google sheets since it offers the web publication and web access to share across multiple users. Please contact us if you would like assistance with the development or any process engineering efforts. Thanks.