Using Marketing Dashboards for Fact-based Decision Making & Accountability

I recently read a New York Times article, “1,000 Points of Data,” which extols the benefits of a comprehensive database of key national indicators. The main point was that to provide greater accountability in Washington we need a tool that enables all Americans to gauge whether we are making progress on vital issues of national concern, and a shared frame of reference would enable us to practice collective accountability.

As someone in favor of, yet concerned about what we are going to get for our trillions of recovery and redevelopment dollars, it sounds like a good idea to me.

So good in fact that I feel commercial companies should use the same concept to tighten up accountability within their own businesses and provide decision makers with a common set of metrics by which to manage their activities. Over a 30 year private sector career, I’ve seen all too often that businesses have no common frame of reference for how well they are doing or how effective their investments have been. Managers frequently come to meetings with conflicting sets of information, or, in the worst cases, without any information at all. When this happens it is shocking, not merely because it seems so peculiar, but more so because it seems so accepted.

The Power of Dashboards
Encouragingly, I think with a concerted effort companies can rectify this deficiency and greatly advance their decision making environments. For instance:

At iKnowtion, we recently helped a client create a marketing effectiveness dashboard that essentially pulls together a scattered set of facts and figures into a standardized tool that is easy for senior managers to comprehend and use. The prototype repackaged existing research and analysis, presented some new measurement frameworks, and was peppered with action-oriented callouts, drill-downs, and recommendations. Though the design stage was fairly involved and required some work to agree upon and locate all the requisite data, once the dashboard was assembled and presented it made a great impression. As one executive gushed, “This is the holy grail!”

The statement demonstrated that even a relatively simplistic solution that makes a common set of metrics available to decision makers can provide great value and is therefore a good investment. In the case of our client, the marketing effectiveness dashboard is now the accepted version of the truth and has become the frame of reference for key investment decisions, as was intended.

Dashboards are not a new idea, and with accountability on the rise and a greater focus on fact-based decision making, their time may have arrived. It will be interesting to see how the government’s efforts progress and whether they usher in a new era of transparency. After all, a lot is at stake. I suspect many American companies can say the same thing right about now.

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Posted by on 03/09/2009 10:54 AM

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