There are hundreds of ways to look our business – we can spend hours staring at financial statements and ratios. But financial statements alone won’t help us make progress…what an entrepreneur really needs is a map.
A great business dashboard can be that map, showing us not just where we are, but also where we are going. (Financial statements tell us only where we’ve already been!)
Like the dashboard in a car, a business dashboard is a tool that tells us how things are going. If we are worried about the engine overheating, we have a temperature gauge. If we want to know whether we are likely to get a speeding ticket, we glance at the speedometer. All the car’s vital systems can be displayed on the dashboard – oil, water, gasoline, rpm, distance and even the direction of travel. A well-constructed business dashboard can likewise tell us a great deal about the function and health of our business.