Tactical Dashboards: Connecting Strategies and Operations
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In the current business scenario, the use of dashboards has become essential for making informed and effective decisions. Tactical dashboards, in particular, play a crucial role in providing detailed insights into short-term projects and departmental goals. But… what are Tactical Dashboards? Do you know the least known types of Dashboards (according to function-related classification)?
Definition and Purpose of Tactical Dashboards
Tactical dashboards are tools designed to connect strategic planning with operational activities. They offer data that helps users make informed decisions that affect short-term goals and strategies. While strategic dashboards focus on long-term insights and operational dashboards monitor routine and short-term activities, tactical dashboards provide a detailed view of the performance of a specific project or department. They track the progress of initiatives against established goals and objectives.
In this sense, they tend to be products that occupy the same analytical layer as Analytical Dashboards — even though they have a different purpose. The main difference between tactical and analytical dashboards is that tactical ones are associated with performance against goals and strategies and a more pragmatic view of the company’s activities, while analytical ones focus on comparing data to identify anomalous behaviors, reveal patterns, and offer insights into the causes of certain situations. In other words, the Tactical panel will show you what it is and how it is performing, while the analytical panel will show you why it is performing the way it is and how it can be improved.
In this way, tactical dashboards increase decision-making efficiency by providing quick and intuitive visual insights. They enable faster and easier understanding of data, even for users with less experience in data analysis. Furthermore, they offer a pragmatic view of the reality of a given initiative or project, showing how the performance is at each stage and the performance of each stakeholder involved.
A quick overview
Imagine a vertical view of a given company’s sales. A vision that can show you top-to-bottom the realities of this company’s sales. If such a product were possible, it would be a mix of all types of Dashboards:
The strategic vision that would convey the main indicators and metrics related to the company’s strategy and its main objectives — regardless of whether they were related to an increase in sales, sales margin or a simple increase in market share — would do exactly what objective with Strategic Dashboards.
On the other hand, and at the other extreme, the extreme short-term view of the activities carried out on a daily basis to achieve the long-term objective defined in the strategy would be exactly what is aimed at with Operational Dashboards: that is, it would be a view of the processes and the operations that will ensure that step-by-step a marathon is covered.
In the middle ground of both, we would have the vision of the intermediate layer: this intermediate layer can seek to see insights and opportunities and solve recurring problems (playing the role expected of an Analytical Dashboard) or focus on ensuring that there is harmony and all teams/departments and individuals contribute as expected to achieve the larger strategic objective (playing the role expected of a Tactical Dashboard).
Features of Tactical Dashboards
Tactical dashboards have several distinctive features, including performance comparison, where they analyze current performance versus goals and benchmarks. They also perform trend analysis, identifying patterns over time and comparing the current situation with goals and expected results at the end of the month, given current performance.
These dashboards use visualizations that facilitate quick interpretation, such as bar charts, line charts, and heat maps. Additionally, they integrate visual alerts and are associated with key performance indicators (KPIs), such as production efficiency and other department-specific KPIs.
This means that tactical dashboards are used to monitor trends and behavior patterns, identify anomalies and deviations, and analyze the performance of processes and operations on a macro and micro level. They are the dashboards that check how teams and departments perform after the strategy is translated into everyday activities, operations, and processes. They track milestones to monitor the status of ongoing projects and operations and present data segmentation by departments, business units, or teams, offering a pragmatic view of where low-performance lies.
Because of this, the main users of tactical dashboards include managers, supervisors, technical and team leaders, as well as professionals responsible for specific initiatives, projects, proofs of concept, or MVPs. They are useful for professionals who need actionable information to change activities in the short and medium term, impacting long-term performance.
That said, common mistakes in the design of tactical dashboards include excess information, which can overwhelm the user, and a lack of clarity in data presentation. Additionally, it is crucial to consider the importance of visual hierarchy and highlighting essential KPIs. Another common mistake is not customizing the dashboard for the specific needs of end users.
Examples
Tactical dashboards are widely used in logistics operations to track the status of deliveries and identify delays. In manufacturing, they are implemented to monitor production and identify bottlenecks. Furthermore, they are common in dashboards related to commercial funnels, comparing team performance.
Conclusion
Tactical dashboards are essential tools that connect long-term strategies with day-to-day operational activities. They offer a detailed view of project and department performance, facilitating informed and effective decision-making. By avoiding common design mistakes and customizing dashboards to end-user needs, companies can maximize the benefits of this powerful analytics tool.