Create a Compelling Facilities Dashboard

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.

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.

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.

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.