Executive Dashboards: Examples, Best Practices, Tools to Use

How do you communicate QoQ performance to the CEO?

What's the easiest way to show the company's financial status to everyone involved?

How do C-level leaders from various departments get on the same page?

Executive dashboards are the answer, providing a unified view of critical data to guide decision-making. This article introduces the concept and utility of executive dashboards, designed for C-level executives and decision-makers in enterprise-grade companies looking for streamlined, impactful ways to present and analyze data.

What Is an Executive Dashboard?

Executive dashboards provide a comprehensive snapshot of a company's performance across all key areas, from sales and marketing to finance and operations. By aggregating and visualizing data in real-time, they empower leadership teams to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs), track progress against strategic goals, and make informed decisions quickly.

The value of executive dashboards lies in their ability to facilitate data-driven decision-making. With the capacity to identify trends, assess risks, and uncover opportunities, they enable efficient allocation of resources and fine-tuning of strategies to maximize ROI. The agility offered by executive dashboards is essential for maintaining and enhancing business performance.

Types of Executive Dashboards & Metrics to Track

Just like we said earlier, executive dashboards enable C-suite leaders to monitor KPIs across different departments, highlighting the necessity for various types of executive dashboards tailored to the specific needs and strategic focus of different roles within an organization.

It's not a one-size-fits-all approach because each executive function—whether it's the CEO, CFO, CMO, or COO—has unique priorities and requires distinct sets of data to inform their decisions.

Sales KPI Dashboard

A sales KPI dashboard is a specialized type of executive dashboard focused exclusively on tracking and analyzing the performance of sales activities and strategies. This dashboard provides a real-time overview of sales health, combining various metrics to offer insights into both high-level performance and granular sales activities.

Metrics to include in a sales KPI dashboard

Revenue tracking: Detailed analysis of total revenue against monthly, quarterly, and annual targets, segmented by product lines and geographic regions to pinpoint growth areas.
Detailed conversion rates: Breakdown of conversion rates at each stage of the sales funnel, including lead-to-opportunity conversion rates and opportunity-to-closed sale rates, segmented by the sales team and individual sales representatives for performance benchmarking.
Average sales cycle length: Measurement of the average time from initial contact to deal closure, analyzed by sales channel and customer segment to identify bottlenecks and streamline the sales process.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC): Comprehensive calculation of the total cost associated with acquiring a new customer, including marketing and sales expenses, segmented by channel to optimize spending.
Lifetime value (LTV): Calculation of the predicted net profit from the entire future relationship with a customer, incorporating factors like purchase frequency and average order value to strategize on customer retention and upselling.
Win/Loss ratio: Comparative analysis of won deals versus lost deals, including reasons for loss and competitive analysis, to refine sales tactics and improve win rates.
Top performing products/services: Sales performance data for each product or service, including units sold, revenue generated, and margin contribution, to highlight successful offerings and adjust inventory or production plans accordingly.

To identify top-performing products and services early on in the funnel, Improvado revenue attribution includes feature importance analysis and custom conversion and event tracking. The product feature importance analysis provides information on the selection of features that customers value the most, that make them go down the sales funnel and ultimately convert. Thus, the marketing and sales teams get more insights on what offerings to prioritize in campaigns and pitches. Custom event and conversion tracking provide a more comprehensive view of the customer journey and its impact on conversions. This type of data is invaluable in improving LTV and understanding sales cycle length.

CEO Dashboard

The CEO dashboard is designed to offer a bird's-eye view of the company's overall performance, aligning various departmental activities with the strategic objectives of the organization.

It's a comprehensive tool that consolidates critical metrics from every corner of the business, enabling quick, informed decision-making at the highest level.

Essential metrics and areas the CEO dashboard typically covers

Revenue and growth metrics: Tracks current revenue against targets, growth trends, and projections. This may include year-over-year growth, revenue by product line, and market share expansion.
Profitability indicators: Includes net profit margin, EBITDA, and cost breakdowns to monitor financial health and operational efficiency.
Cash flow analysis: Offers insights into the company's liquidity, cash flow operations, and investment activities, crucial for assessing financial stability.
Operational performance: Highlights key performance indicators related to production efficiency, supply chain operations, and customer service levels to ensure operational goals are met.
Customer and market insights: Focuses on customer satisfaction scores, retention rates, and market penetration. It may also track new customer acquisition costs and lifetime value (LTV) to gauge marketing effectiveness.
Strategic project tracking: Monitors the progress of key initiatives against milestones and budgets, ensuring strategic projects remain on track.

The configuration and focus of a CEO dashboard can vary significantly depending on the strategic objectives of the organization.

Aim to expand market share? Focus on tracking changes within key segments and the overall industry to gauge competitive positioning or monitor metrics related to new market entries, including initial market share, growth rate, and local competitive analysis.
Aim for revenue diversification? Analyze revenue contributions across different products or services to identify high performers and diversification opportunities and monitor cross-selling and up-selling ratios within the existing customer base.
Aim to maximize customer lifetime value? Analyze the balance between acquisition costs and the long-term value generated by customers.
Experimenting with pricing? Your CEO dashboard should include metrics evaluating the impact of pricing changes on sales volume, revenue, and profit margins.

Pro tip from Improvado CEO Daniel Kravtsov: AI makes leaders better at making decisions — by reducing their transaction costs. Let me explain. My days are packed with decision-making. In the process, I pose dozens of questions to our analysts. Some questions take them hours or even days to answer. Recently, we connected our AI Agent to all Improvado data. Since then, It's like having x-ray vision. I’m now able to handle most of the questions on my own. Questions take minutes to answer, and even when I’m facing a challenge that produces an enormous amount of questions with every new variable, I just keep chatting with our data.

Company Dashboard

The company dashboard is a type of executive dashboard designed to provide a holistic view of an organization’s performance, integrating data across all major functions. It’s essential for ensuring that strategic objectives are aligned with operational outcomes, facilitating cross-departmental synergy and informed decision-making at all levels.

What metrics to include to the company dashboard

For growth-oriented companies: Focus on metrics that measure market expansion, such as new customer growth rates, market share changes, and revenue growth from new products or services.
For stability-focused companies: In your company dashboard, emphasize financial health and operational efficiency metrics, including cost control measures, profit margin stability, and cash flow management.
For innovation-driven companies: Include R&D spending as a percentage of revenue, the pipeline of new products, and metrics tracking the adoption rate of new technologies or practices.

At first glance, a company dashboard may seem identical to a CEO dashboard. While similar in their high-level overview purpose, these executive dashboards are tailored for different audiences and objectives within an organization.

A company dashboard is designed for a wider range of stakeholders, including department heads, managers, and sometimes the entire organization. It aims to foster cross-departmental alignment and operational efficiency.

A CEO dashboard is primarily tailored for the CEO and possibly other C-level executives. It focuses more on financial metrics, strategic KPIs, and long-term goals of the company.

An executive KPI dashboard is another term that is often used interchangeably with a company dashboard. In some organizations, it can be one dashboard, in other it can be two different executive dashboards that denote slight differences in focus and content

The main difference lies in the scope and granularity. A company dashboard provides a holistic view of organizational performance, while an executive KPI dashboard zeroes in on specific, strategically chosen indicators.

CMO Dashboard

A CMO dashboard is a specialized executive dashboard tailored for Chief Marketing Officers and marketing leaders, designed to consolidate key marketing performance indicators into a single, comprehensive view.

This dashboard is crucial for CMOs to quickly assess the effectiveness of marketing strategies, track the ROI of marketing spend, and adjust tactics in real-time to capitalize on market opportunities.

Metrics to include in a CMO dashboard

Marketing ROI: Analysis of overall return on marketing investments, breaking down by channels and campaigns to identify high and low performers.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC): Tracking the cost associated with acquiring a new customer through various marketing efforts.
Sales revenue attributed to marketing: Direct measurement of sales revenue generated from marketing campaigns, offering clear insight into marketing's impact on the bottom line.
Marketing influenced customer percentage: The proportion of customers who had any interaction with marketing before making a purchase, highlighting marketing’s role in the sales process.
Customer segmentation performance: Analysis of campaign performance and engagement metrics across different customer segments, identifying high-value segments for targeted marketing.
Funnel drop-off rates: The CMO dashboard should include a detailed view of where potential customers exit the conversion funnel, pinpointing areas for improvement in the customer journey.

Executive Financial Dashboard

The executive financial dashboard is a pivotal tool for CFOs and finance executives, designed to centralize critical financial data and metrics in one intuitive display. This dashboard enables top executives to oversee the financial health of the organization, manage risks, and capitalize on opportunities, crucial for steering the company toward financial stability and growth.

Key metrics to monitor in an executive financial dashboard for CFOs

Operating cash flow: Insights into the cash generated from operational activities, highlighting the company's ability to sustain and grow operations.
EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization): A measure of the company's overall financial performance and profitability.
Gross profit margin: The ratio of gross profit to total revenue, indicating the efficiency of production and pricing strategies.
Net profit margin: Net income as a percentage of revenue, reflecting the company's bottom-line profitability after all expenses.
Return on equity (ROE): Measures profitability by revealing how much profit a company generates with the money shareholders have invested.
Debt-to-equity ratio: A key metric of financial leverage, indicating the balance between the company's debt and shareholders' equity.
Liquidity ratios (current and quick ratios): Assess the company's ability to cover short-term obligations, crucial for financial stability.

Additional metrics to add to your financial performance dashboard

Delve deeper into financial trend analysis by examining key metrics such as revenue growth, cost trends, and profitability ratios over various periods. This analysis helps discern not just cyclical patterns but also the effectiveness of strategic initiatives, guiding future financial strategy.

To enhance the budget versus actual comparison, segment it into critical areas like revenue, expenses, and specific project costs. Utilize variance analysis to pinpoint discrepancies, understand the root causes, and implement corrective actions swiftly to stay on financial course.

Actual vs. Forecast Financial Executive Dashboard

The actual vs. forecast financial executive dashboard is a specialized tool that contrasts real-time financial outcomes with projected forecasts. While the executive financial dashboard offers a broad overview of the company's financial status, the actual vs. forecast dashboard focuses specifically on the comparison between projected financial outcomes and actual results. This focus allows for a more targeted analysis of forecasting effectiveness and the immediate financial trajectory of the company.

Metrics to include to an actual vs. forecast financial executive dashboard:

Revenue Comparison: Actual revenue versus forecasted figures, segmented by business unit, product line, or geography.
Expense Tracking: Comparison of actual expenses against budgeted amounts to identify areas of overspending or efficiency gains.
Cash Flow Variances: Analysis of expected versus actual cash flow, highlighting discrepancies in operational efficiency or capital expenditure.
Profit Margin Analysis: Actual profit margins compared with forecasted margins, providing insights into operational performance and cost management.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Variances: Specific KPIs that were projected versus their actual outcomes, offering a granular view of performance across departments.

Which companies gain the most from an actual vs. forecast financial dashboard?

This type of executive financial dashboard is particularly beneficial for specific types of companies that operate in environments where financial agility and precision in forecasting are critical to success:

High-growth companies: Organizations experiencing rapid expansion often face volatile markets and fluctuating revenue streams. For these companies, closely monitoring actual performance against forecasts is crucial for managing growth sustainably and allocating resources effectively.
Organizations undergoing transformation: Companies amid significant strategic shifts, such as mergers, acquisitions, or pivots to new business models, require precise financial tracking to ensure the changes yield the desired financial outcomes. The actual vs. forecast financial executive dashboard aids in evaluating the financial impact of these transformations.
Seasonal businesses: For companies with significant seasonal variations in sales and operations, comparing actual results to forecasts is essential for optimizing inventory management, staffing, and marketing efforts throughout the fiscal year.

Investor Relations Dashboard

The investor relations (IR) dashboard is an essential executive dashboard tailored for CFOs, Investor Relations Officers, and senior executives focused on managing stakeholder communications and investor expectations. It consolidates key financial and operational metrics to facilitate transparent, effective communication with investors, analysts, and regulatory bodies.

Metrics to monitor with the investor relations dashboard

Earnings performance: EPS (Earnings Per Share), revenue growth, and profit margins, compared against market expectations and previous periods.
Stock performance: Share price trends, trading volumes, and market capitalization, alongside benchmark comparisons.
Investor engagement: You can add metrics on investor meetings, analyst calls, and press releases, quantifying the reach and impact of IR activities.
Dividend information: Current dividend yield, payout ratios, and historical dividend growth rates.
Competitive analysis: Comparative analysis of key financial ratios and performance metrics against industry competitors.

Executive Summary Dashboard

The executive summary dashboard is designed to provide a concise, high-level overview of an organization's critical metrics and performance indicators. Tailored for C-suite executives and senior decision-makers, this dashboard distills complex data into a snapshot, enabling quick comprehension of the company's current status and facilitating swift strategic decisions.

The executive summary dashboard meets this need by highlighting essential data points, trends, and alerts, ensuring leaders can stay informed without getting bogged down in details. It’s particularly useful for gaining an immediate understanding of performance across all key areas of the business, identifying potential issues, and recognizing opportunities at the earliest.

Metrics to include to the executive summary dashboard

Overall financial performance: Quick snapshots of revenue, expenses, and profit margins.
Key performance indicators (KPIs): High-level KPIs that align with the organization’s strategic goals, such as customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, and operational efficiency.
Market position: Overview of market share, competitive landscape, and brand recognition.
Risk indicators: Critical alerts on potential risks, including financial anomalies, operational disruptions, or emerging competitive threats.
Strategic project updates: Status of major initiatives against milestones and objectives, highlighting any areas requiring attention.

Creating Executive Dashboard: Best Practices

Beyond the foundational principles of data visualization, crafting an executive dashboard that genuinely impacts decision-making requires delving into more nuanced best practices.

Start with the end in mind

Before diving into the technicalities, have a clear understanding of what decisions this particular executive dashboard is intended to support. This clarity guides the selection of metrics and the design of the dashboard. It’s not just about displaying data but providing insights that lead to action.

Simplify, then simplify again

C-level is bombarded with data. A successful dashboard for executives distills complexity into simplicity. This means prioritizing metrics that truly matter and presenting them in an intuitive, easy-to-digest manner. Avoid the temptation to include every possible data point. Remember, a cluttered dashboard is a useless dashboard.

Streamline with data automation

Streamline the data collection process by automating the integration from various sources. This not only saves time but also reduces the risk of errors, ensuring that the dashboard reflects the most accurate and comprehensive data picture.

Improvado automates the collection and preparation of data, ensuring a consistent and reliable data flow. The platform provides 500+ pre-built data sources and ships custom ones in less than two weeks. The integration process is designed with robust error handling and notification systems to quickly identify and rectify any issues, minimizing downtime and data inaccuracies.

Stay informed, act fast with custom alerts

Implement customizable alerts for key metrics that require immediate attention. It'll ensure that executives are promptly informed of critical changes or potential issues.

Think of three types of custom alerts for your executive dashboard:

Threshold-based alerts: Set up alerts based on specific thresholds for key metrics. For example, if cash flow drops below a certain level or if there's an unexpected spike in customer churn, relevant executives can be immediately notified.
Contextual alerts: Beyond simple threshold alerts, implement algorithms that consider historical data and trends to provide context. This way, alerts are not just reactive but also predictive, flagging potential issues before they escalate.
User-defined preferences: Allow users to customize their alert settings, including thresholds, alert channels, and frequency. This ensures that executives receive relevant alerts in their preferred manner, enhancing engagement with the dashboard.

The foundations of dashboard integrity

Maintaining comprehensive documentation and robust governance is essential for the reliability of an executive dashboard.

This includes a complete catalog of data sources, providing clarity on where data originates, its frequency of update, and any transformations it undergoes. Metrics definitions should be clearly outlined, explaining how each metric is calculated, what it represents, and its relevance to business objectives.

Governance processes are the framework within which changes to the dashboard are managed. They ensure that any modifications—be it adding new metrics or updating visual elements—are performed systematically, with oversight to maintain the dashboard's integrity. This includes setting up protocols for requesting, reviewing, and implementing changes, and conducting regular audits to ensure the dashboard remains aligned with its intended purpose.

Governance also involves defining access controls and permissions, ensuring users have appropriate access that reflects their role and needs, further securing sensitive information and maintaining data accuracy. Keep detailed logs of dashboard access and changes to track usage and modifications. This is important for security audits and understanding how the dashboard is utilized.

Building an Executive-Level Reporting Dashboard

Navigating the complexity of dashboard creation requires more than just data aggregation—it demands executive dashboard software that automates and customizes the process to fit precise strategic needs.

Improvado addresses this by automating the dashboard creation process, ensuring data from various sources is seamlessly integrated and presented in a meaningful way. The Improvado Professional Services team excels in crafting custom-built dashboards, designed to provide actionable insights tailored to specific organizational goals. This approach streamlines the analytical workflow and delivers bespoke dashboards that enhance decision-making, without the burden of manual data manipulation. Book a call to enable data-driven decision-making with custom-built executive dashboards.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the CEO want to see in a dashboard?

A CEO dashboard should concisely display the company's financial health through key metrics like revenue, profit margins, and cash flow. It should also highlight progress on strategic goals, operational efficiency, market positioning against competitors, and potential risks. Furthermore, insights into the effectiveness of marketing strategies and sales performance are crucial, reflecting on how these elements drive overall company success. This dashboard provides a holistic view of the company's performance, enabling swift, informed decision-making.

What is a leadership dashboard?

A leadership dashboard, also referred to as an executive dashboard, is a visual representation tool that consolidates and displays KPIs, metrics, and data points relevant to the strategic goals and operational health of an organization. It is tailored for C-level executives and leaders to provide a quick and comprehensive overview of the company's performance across various domains such as finance, sales, operations, and marketing. A leadership dashboard aids in informed decision-making by highlighting trends, opportunities, challenges, and efficiencies, enabling leaders to track progress toward objectives, identify areas requiring intervention, and make strategic adjustments.

How do I create an executive dashboard?

To create an executive dashboard, begin by defining its objectives to align with the strategic goals and decision-making needs of senior leaders. Select KPIs that reflect the company's performance across financial, operational, customer, and employee metrics. Ensure data accuracy by integrating reliable data sources and automating data collection where possible. Design the dashboard to be user-friendly, with clear visualizations that simplify complex information into actionable insights. Customize the dashboard to suit the preferences of its executive users, allowing for drill-downs into more detailed data as needed. Finally, iterate on the dashboard based on feedback from its users to continually refine its effectiveness and relevance.

What is the best software to create a dashboard?

The best software for creating an executive dashboard should offer robust data integration capabilities, allowing for the aggregation of data from multiple sources into a single platform. It must feature intuitive design tools for crafting clear, insightful visualizations and provide customization options to tailor dashboards to specific executive needs. Additionally, real-time data processing and the ability to automate reports are crucial for timely decision-making. Security features that protect sensitive information and user-friendly interfaces are also key attributes. Improvado stands out as an executive dashboard software that embodies these attributes. The platform excels in integrating data from various sources, offering a wide range of customization options to ensure dashboards meet the unique requirements of each organization.