What Is Your Dashboard Report Telling You? Chances Are, Not Much.

Fast-forward 30 years and most firms are still struggling to capture compelling business intelligence about themselves. Until recently, most operated with a cadre of legacy operating systems, financial platforms and reporting technologies from different manufacturers (some of which are long-since extinct) that have no mechanism for connecting with each other, let alone automatically extracting and updating data points between systems. The disparate nature of these technologies has exacerbated the struggle to leverage data and display results in a reporting mechanism that helps direct the firm's decision-making.

What Is a Dashboard?

A good dashboard puts the right information at the fingertips of the people who need it. Ultimately, a firm just needs a good dashboard. Analogous to the dashboard of an automobile that lets drivers monitor the major functions at a glance via an instrument panel, businesses have been leveraging data to monitor and track progress of projects, initiatives and overall business health for nearly two centuries. This use of data is one of the hallmarks of the industrial revolution that defined the 19th century.

Back in the heyday of financial services, what constituted a "dashboard" was clear. However, I find the term increasingly more confusing — and sometimes even misleading. This is because virtually every modern application comes with its own so-called "dashboard." The consumerization of business technology has influenced — in a negative way, I might add — the definition of dashboard reporting.

For example, the term "dashboard reporting" is used to describe everything from the way your networks interact with you on social media to your vital signs and exercise habits as captured by your wearable technology to the presentation of personal finances through your online banking portal. Every technology-maker feels compelled to include the word "dashboard" in their product descriptions. Unfortunately, most of these dashboards, while visually interesting, offer little significant relevance or value.

Some law firms have fallen for the sales pitch, pouring a ton of investment into a dashboard — only to wind up presenting pretty pictures for which the staff struggle to find a practical purpose. However, a well-designed dashboard can be very effective and can contribute significantly to law firm efficiency. Remember those two caveats about my data geekdom? They apply to this as well.

What Makes a Good Dashboard?

The nexus of a quality dashboard is that it provides information that is not only compelling, but also is useful for decision-making. The speedometer of the car helps keep a driver informed about current speed, which is compelling intelligence if you're driving through an area known for speed traps, but it's also useful for decision-making if you need to be somewhere in less than three hours and your current rate of speed puts you there in four.

The point is that the most-useful dashboards are built with data indicators that satisfy multiple needs: 1) a need to comply with a set standard; and 2), balance that with a need to achieve a specific goal. Useful dashboards do not display everything but the kitchen sink. That's not only unhelpful, it's confusing. If the firm presents too much information in the dashboard, it risks overwhelming the user. If it presents too little, then it's delivering questionable value. If it doesn't provide the right information, then it lacks a purpose.

But what if you don't have any dashboard reporting at all? I get this question all the time.

If you don't already have a dashboard reporting system in place, the best way to figure out how to implement a system is to do an exhaustive audit of the data and information your firm is collecting and/or storing. If you don't know whether you're even capturing a certain set of data, how can you measure it and report on effectiveness? An audit can also help you identify gaps in your data systems and operational processes that limit the ability to build an effective dashboard and that can help firm leaders and managers build a business case for technology and system migration.

Once you've completed a data/information audit of your systems and processes and you're comfortable that you know what you're collecting, the next step is to figure out what you need. Do you need to know the realization rate of every partner or staffer in February? Probably not as compelling or necessary as it is in November and December, when collections can make or break a year. When law firms struggle with dashboards, it's usually not because the content isn't useful or valuable, but that the content doesn't meet the need of the user at that time. Be mindful of those situations so you can build flexibility into the reporting system and certain important data points are at your fingertips when you need them.

As a law firm leader, it is important make a critical determination about what the picture of success looks like and the factors that shape this picture. The dashboard will have little effectiveness or usefulness until it reflects data that inform the picture of success. Here are some questions you may want to consider as you select the data points for your dashboard:

• What is the firm trying to accomplish?
• What are the firm's strategic goals?
• What actions have to be taken to reach these goals?
• Which metrics can measure the success of these actions in terms of reaching the firm's strategic goals?

Asking these questions will inevitably lead you to your ideal key performance indicators. These are the holy grail of business intelligence — the data points you need to add to your dashboard. It should go without saying (although, surprisingly, it doesn't) that a dashboard isn't meant for heavy-duty data analysis; instead, it serves people who want to see, at a glance, how things are going and what they should do about it.

Conclusion

So many options are available on the market to help you find a solution to build your complete dashboard reporting system, but you do yourself and your firm a huge disservice if you aren't carefully vetting and critically analyzing what data you're including in the dashboard. If they aren't good data, or aren't the right data, I don't want anything to do with it. But I'll gladly roll up my sleeves and help figure out how to fix it. I can't help myself; I'm a data geek.

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Jim Jarrell is Senior Vice President, Marketing & Business Development at Jaffe. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @JimJarrell.