Written by Nils R. | Jul 12, 2021 7:00:00 AM
What is
an
Executive Dashboard for Professional Services Companies
? Executive Dashboards are considered monitoring tools and are used by senior leaders as a self-service, real-time solution to review revenue and expense trends as well as key project metrics. Some of the main functionality in this type of visual report is that it is parameter driven so the user can run it for any year and month to see the result graphically. The report shows eight perspectives of the business, including: 1) Actual versus budget revenue by category, 2) Actual and budget monthly revenue trend, 3) Top five expenses with actual to budget comparison, 4) Actual and budget expense trend, 5) Pipeline by project, with high and low estimates, 6) Monthly pipeline trend with high and low estimates, 7) Top ten clients by billing amount, and 8) Bottom ten clients by billing amount. Below the charts there is a table section showing the figures used in the visuals. You find an example of this type of report below.
Purpose of
Executive Dashboards for Professional Services Professional Services organizations use Executive Dashboards to give leaders an easy way to analyze the top performance drivers of the company. When used as part of good business practices in Executive departments, a company can improve its strategic decisions and financial performance, and it can reduce the chances that key profitability inhibitors are not addressed in a timely fashion due to lack of insight to the underlying metrics.
Example of a
Executive Dashboards for Professional Service Here is an example of an Executive Dashboard with revenue and expense trends and variances as well as client rankings. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2560"]
Example of an Executive Dashboard for Professional Services Companies[/caption] You can find hundreds of additional examples
here
Who Uses This Type of
Visual report
? The typical users of this type of visual report are: CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CROs and other top leaders.
Other Reports Often Used in Conjunction with
Executive Dashboards for Professional Services Progressive Executive departments sometimes use several different Executive Dashboards, along with profit & loss reports, KPI dashboards, project dashboards and detailed project reports, project forecast models, annual budget models and other management and control tools.
Where Does the Data for Analysis Originate From? The Actual (historical transactions) data typically comes from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like: Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC), Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Sage Intacct, Sage 100, Sage 300, Sage 500, Sage X3, SAP Business One, SAP ByDesign, Acumatica, Netsuite and others. In analyses where budgets or forecasts are used, the planning data most often originates from in-house Excel spreadsheet models or from professional corporate performance management (CPM/EPM) solutions.
What Tools are Typically used for Reporting, Planning and Dashboards? Examples of business software used with the data and ERPs mentioned above are:
- Native ERP report writers and query tools
- Spreadsheets (for example Microsoft Excel)
- Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools (for example Solver)
- Dashboards (for example Microsoft Power BI and Tableau)
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Cloud Solutions and More Examples
