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Roadmap

Create a Compelling Facilities Dashboard

Dashboards can be powerful tools. They enable Facilities leaders to cut through the noise of data overload and focus on a subset of metrics that enable better management and operational decisions. However, Facilities leaders must overcome the challenges of choosing the right metrics, displaying them in an impactful format, and identifying performance targets and action triggers.

Decision Support

Determine your best-fit performance management tool

First, institutions should assess their purpose for tracking data. If the purpose is to track Facilities’ progress toward achievement of strategic objectives, Facilities leaders should consider a scorecard. If the purpose is to better track, manage, and improve operational performance, a dashboard is a more appropriate tool.

Choose what's right for you

  1. My Facilities function needs a scorecard

    Read more about what best-practice Facilities scorecards look like

  2. My Facilities function needs a dashboard

    Choose between the three most common Facilities dashboard formats

Action Support

Decide which metrics to elevate

Institutions need to apply a filtering process to narrow down hundreds of potential metrics into a list of 15 to 20 key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs are defined as the institution-specific metrics that indicate progress toward strategic and operational objectives. To decide which metrics to elevate to a dashboard, institutions should:

  1. Start with EAB’s compendium of 700+ Facilities metrics or an institutional metrics list.
  2. Use the five filtering steps or EAB’s Quick-Start Guides to narrow down the list to 15-20 KPIs.
Action Support

How to display metrics in a compelling format

While elevation of the right metrics is a critical first step, poor design can make or break efforts to better leverage data. The next step is to display metrics in a compelling dashboard format. Effective dashboard layouts are concise with clear directionality and color-coding, have accessible data visualizations with context, and have metrics that are in a consistent time frame and are matched to strategic goals.

Action Support

Choose appropriate targets and action triggers

As a final step to ensure progress on selected metrics and compel action when performance lags, institutions should establish two distinct metric thresholds: performance targets and action triggers. Targets clarify performance goals, while triggers signal when goal achievement is highly unlikely without immediate corrective action.

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