The use of dashboards has been spreading throughout organizations. From tracking manufacturing performance to the latest sales numbers, dashboards aim to provide a quick, comprehensive snapshot of how well an organization, business unit, or project is performing.
As R&D Portfolio Management processes mature within organizations, they evolve from once-a-year budgeting activities to evergreen processes that support multiple levels of decision-making throughout the business calendar. For example, many companies leverage their Portfolio Management function to provide monthly updates on the status of the portfolio. These may include:
- a summary of significant changes made to project schedules or forecasts,
- a list of projects that have moved out of the portfolio (for positive or negative reasons),
- a discussion of potential projects that might be added to the portfolio, and
- an overall summary that answers the question, “How are we doing?”
The challenge in dashboard design is to create an easy-to-read, informative, relevant report. It is difficult enough to construct a single chart that clearly communicates information to your executives; with a dashboard you attempt to integrate multiple sources of information such that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is easier said than done! Below we’ve selected three dashboards from our library of samples available within the Enrich Analytcs Platform base offering for R&D portfolio management. We often use these as a catalyst for discussions about how to tailor dashboards to a client’s specific needs.
The View from Above
This portfolio dashboard gives executives instant feedback on revenue goals and the balance of the portfolio across divisions, innovation, and cost
Executive dashboards can provide this overall summary via a set of high-level analyses, and typically pay particular attention to any gaps between portfolio forecasts and targets. Typical analyses compare projected sales against corporate or divisional targets, or projected R&D spend against the available budget. By highlighting only the gaps in such analyses (as in the figure on the right), the executive’s eye is quickly drawn to the areas that require the most attention. In this example, the company is suffering from a dearth of product launches in 2011 and 2012, leading to a gap in sales a few years later. This dashboard reinforces several stylistic concepts that will enhance any dashboard:
- Colors are used sparingly, so that the reader’s eye is drawn towards the most important details first
- Repetition of graph styles and colors enable readers, over time, to quickly spot anomalies and changes from the last review session or report
- Information is sized according to its importance, with the most important information positioned in the top-left quadrant: the first area scanned by most readers
The Devil’s in the Details
For an executive team ready to manage uncertainty, this dashboard conveys the likelihood of meeting revenue targets and a range of possible values for new platforms and eNPV.
Another use of dashboards is to provide a more detailed summary of the portfolio. For example, which projects do we expect to generate the most revenue, or which do we expect to consume the greatest resources? The figure on the left provides an example of a more detailed dashboard. These types of dashboards can also be used to display the projected timeline of each project and upcoming milestones, project comparisons across a range of financial metrics, or an overview of how the portfolio is balanced across divisions.
For executives looking for a quick summary of the current R&D portfolio launch dates, costs, and projected revenues, consider this interactive example that works well on tablets such as iPads. It has the following characteristics:
- A pipeline chart that shows the current phase and division of each project
- Drill down capability providing instant access to: Individual project timelines and probabilities of launch, to revenue for projects within each division, and to current year costs within each division
- Assessment of multiple portfolio scenarios, with the ability to include and exclude specific projects from each scenario in real time
This project dashboard conveys key metrics, a profit and loss statement, and a visual representation of cash flow
What’s Good for the Goose…
The dashboard concept can also be applied to individual projects. These can be extremely useful for giving team members a quick overview of a project’s progress. Typical outputs for a project dashboard include a set of financials, a comparison of the actual project schedule to the project plan, and a summary of high-level metrics. Project dashboards can be useful for single-slide summaries in project review presentations or for e-mailing to a broader project team for quick updates.
Getting the Most from Dashboards
With the proliferation of dashboards across the enterprise, the applications in R&D Portfolio Management are myriad and the benefits are clear. Of course, dashboards are not “one size fits all,” and care must be given to their design. By customizing the exact set of graphs and tables for specific groups of executives, portfolio managers can ensure the dashboard is as effective as possible.
If you are interested in seeing more examples of dashboards within the Enrich Analytics Platform, or learning how easily these dashboards can be customized to your needs, please contact us for a hands-on, interactive demonstration.
