Dashboards allow organizations to monitor and manage their business processes by processing information and data from multiple systems and departments in a central point. However there are specific characteristics, depending on the manner of use and development, that differentiate dashboards. This essay examines operational and tactical dashboard differences and similarities.
Differences
Operational dashboards assist an organization in the day-to-day running of the organization. These dashboards are available for junior staff and lower level management. Front office operations are the main uses of the operational dashboard. On the other hand, tactical dashboards present managers with a more extended outlook of the organization. Furthermore, they act as an evaluation tool for management on new operational models or technologies introduced in the short-term. In fact tactical dashboards assist companies undergoing an organizational change to notice inflection points during the transition period (Nugent, 2002). Therefore, tactical dashboards give managers an opportunity to influence how the market reacts to their organization’s products (BIDashboards, 2010).
Middle level managers use tactical dashboards to fill the gap between the current organizational environment characteristics and future expectations. Tactical dashboards are able to do this because they contain a prediction function that analyses present data and then predicts future trends (Nugent, 2002).
Operational dashboards focus on the operation of the organization. One of their common characteristics is a provision of detailed insights that do not require extra analysis to understand (Ericson, 2008). They provide a converged system that allows organizational members to monitor and explore performance data. They eliminate the need for staff from different departments to manually obtain relevant operational data from each department (Person, 2009). In addition, their main advantage is the removal of data replication that results from manual inputs and queries. Moreover, operational dashboard procedures allow data management in the organization to happen even when end users are using the system (Eckerson, 2006b).
Similarities
Tactical and operational dashboards are all examples of business intelligence software. Both dashboards offer critical information to managers on a real-time basis while at the same time filtering out the unnecessary details (Eckerson, See it coming, 2006). Technology use in the organization can be innovative or a stable working technology for everyday use. Organizations face a challenge of balancing between investments in the two technology types and maintaining their progress. Both tactical and operational dashboards enable management to use resources efficiently by identifying current needs or predicting future needs of the organization (Bose, 2009). The two forms of dashboards can also be customized to use various browser-based technologies so that information and data is integrated to facilitate a cost effective way of collection and dissemination (McKeen, Smith, & Singh, 2005). Some common browser based technologies applicable to both dashboards are online analytical processing and ad-hoc analysis (McKeen, Smith, & Singh, 2005).
Organizations have departments that are interconnected, and as a result face complexities. Additionally, expanded business environment brought by globalization increases challenges facing organizations. In this regard, intellectual property serves as a resource in need of proper harnessing to give the organization a competitive advantage. Both operational and tactical dashboards provide organizations with a flexible and dynamic mechanism of leveraging their intellectual capital (Schiuma & Lerro, 2008). Operational dashboards are fusible with tactical dashboards to provide a bottom up approach where lower level indicators form part of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for managers (Eckerson, 2006a). Similarly, tactical dashboards may be fused downwards in a top down management approach so that KPIs influence operational-level activities of the organization (Nooijer, 2011).
Finally, dashboards add a self-service functionality to normal business operations such that its end users become self-reliant while looking for information or giving feedback. As a result, both operational and tactical dashboards improve the overall understanding of business processes by their users (Rasmussen et al., 2009).
References
BIDashboards. (2010). Tactical dashboards. Web.
Bose, R. (2009). Advanced analytics: opportunity and challenges. Industrial management and data system, 109(2), 155-172.
Eckerson, W. W. (2006a). Performance dashboards: measuring, monitoring, and managing your business. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Eckerson, W. W. (2006b). See it coming. Web.
Ericson, J. (2008). Simply operational. Dashboard Management Review, 18(12), 16-17.
McKeen, J. D., Smith, H. A., & Singh, S. (2005). Development in practice XX – digital dashboards: keep your eyes on the road. Communication of the Association for Information Systems, 2005(16), 1013-1026.
Nooijer, H. d. (2011). Strategic, tactical and operational dashboards.
Nugent, J. H. (2002). Plan to win: Analytical and operational tools – Gaining competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Person, R. (2009). Balanced scorecards and operational dashboards with microsoft excel. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing.
Rasmussen, N. H., Rasmussen, N., Chen, C. Y., & Bansal, M. (2009). Business Dashboards: A visual catalogue for design and development. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Schiuma, G., & Lerro, A. (2008). Intellectual capital and company’s performance improvement.Measuring business intelligence, 12(2), 3-9.