Free Excel Dashboards

Our friends at Klipfolio provided the following look at Dashboard Reporting Time Frames

An essay on time frame comparison metrics.

We take an close, in-depth examination of 3 common ways of applying time frames and comparative values with an organization’s key performance indicators (KPIs). Once your organization has adopted a KPI dashboard, the next steps – to truly make the metrics work for you – may not be as obvious. A great starting point is our article on the anatomy of a KPI, where we look at how consciously designing your KPIs can influence the way you interact and act on them.

The next item to consider is what type of time frame paradigm you want to use when tracking your Key Performance Indicators. This article will examine 3 important models: historic, X-to-Date, and moving/rolling metrics.

Historic metrics

Historic business metrics or KPIs have a fixed start and end date with a full data set – for example, last year, last quarter, or last month. This metric is locked-in and must be compared to other historic metrics.

Although this type of measure might compare values from yesterday to the previous day, scenarios typically look at monthly, quarterly, and yearly time frames. That generally means that the operative word describing historic business metrics is “strategic.” Since this type of metric lends itself to longer time frames, you will spot trends and patterns that are less granular. Historic metrics tend to answer fairly broad or strategic questions, such as the following: what is the state of my business based on this metric compared to last year/quarter/month?

X-to-Date metrics

X-to-Date measures have a fixed start date with a moving end date – for example, this year to date, this quarter to date, or this month to date. As such, you will be working with a partial data set that provides you with a story that unfolds before your eyes. This type of measure is very common, and is the traditional way of reporting sales and financial metrics.

X-to-Date metrics or measurements tend to be more tactical than historic reports. Again, this has to do with the fact that they tend to be more operational in nature simply because the last set of values generally is today (or yesterday depending on how frequently the date is refreshed). A unique, and sometimes challenging, aspect of X-to-Date metrics is that at the beginning of the period (ie: 2 days into the Quarter), the numbers can be very volatile, or even misleading. There is just not enough data there to be statistically relevant.

As is the case when comparing any metric or KPI, use Past X-to-Date, or Last Year X-to-Date, so that you’re comparing apples to apples.

Moving or rolling metrics

Moving or rolling business metrics have a fluid start and end date – for example, the past 24hrs, or the past 7/30/60 days. The data set used for this metric is complete and grants tactical insights into the operations of your business. This type of business metric can be utilized by front-line workers as well as managers and executives.

Consider the use case of a call center using a rolling metric such as Average Service Level for the past hour (taken from our KPI Examples-Call Center Metrics article). As the metric changes, say to indicate that the center is not meeting its current Service Level Agreement, agents and managers can respond to the situation accordingly. Again, rolling metrics are compared with past rolling metrics – for example, Past 30-60 days, or Last Year past 30 days.

Recap – reporting time frames

This summary chart will provide you a breakdown of the distinctions between the three time frames we’ve just discussed.

Notes on acronyms:
- Prev, Prior, Past: All seem to be the same and can be shortened to PY or PriorMTD for example
- Last: Used the same as prev, prior, and past. Can be shortened to LY or LQ for example

Parting shots

Developing a comprehensive and useful KPI monitoring strategy requires considering what types of business metrics you need to monitor as well what time frame paradigm you should apply. Knowing who in your organization needs what information harkens back to the old writing rule, “know your audience!” Once you know this, rolling out metrics tailor made to suit their needs – such as a historic metric showing percentage YoY of sales growth for an executive – becomes much easier and much more effective.

Dashboard Spies love it when I show them business intelligence dashboard project artifacts. Here’s a look at a high fidelity mockup of the recently developed enterprise dashboard for Groupsite. It allows an enterprise to have a bird’s eye view of the digital communities spread across an organization.

This description is from the internal document that was leaked to me:

With the coming release of Groupsite’s Enterprise Dashboard, organizations are now empowered to gain actionable insights from all communities across their enterprise to spot trends, opportunities and potential problems. With Groupsite’s Enterprise Dashboard, marketing units now have the data at their fingertips to shape offerings and increase sales and brand engagement.

Groupsite is the industry’s leading SaaS platform for engaging external stakeholders of any organization. Leading companies, educational institutions, associations and government agencies have deployed more than 50,000 Groupsites to date. Groupsites leverage social collaboration to increase engagement in extranets, communities of interest, membership communities, supplier communities, customer communities and more.

Groupsite’s Enterprise Dashboard is comprised of the following:

Summary section:

The Summary section of the dashboard contains an at-a-glance overview of daily, weekly and monthly activity across a given selection of Groupsites associated with the entire organization or a select division within.
Additionally, the summary section includes trending and popular topics as well as a snap shot of the activity of select keywords and tagged users.

Statistics section:
The Statistics section of the dashboard contains a rollup of all statistics data including usage & pageviews, demographics & member stats, and email & invitation stats of Groupsites associated with the entire organization or a select division within.

Members section:
The Members section of the dashboard provides full profile data on each individual member that participates in any Groupsite community. From the dashboard, members can be suspended, or removed from all Groupsites in which they are associated. Members can also be tagged so that dashboard managers can easily track their Groupsite activity.

Groupsites section:
The Groupsites section provides detailed information on any Groupsite within the enterprise or division within. These details include member counts, branding, creation date, feature usage and more.

Syndicate Content section:
The Syndicate content section of the dashboard empowers dashboard managers at the enterprise or division level to add content directly to one or many Groupsites across the enterprise from the dashboard. Content can include the insertion of videos, system messages, blog posts, calendar events, surveys and more.

Here is a look at the details:

Groupsite Enterprise Dashboard Components