Part 1: Introduction

Digital Dashboard

A digital dashboard, also known as an enterprise dashboard or executive dashboard, is a business management tool used to visually ascertain the status (or "health") of a business enterprise via key business indicators. Digital dashboards use visual, at-a-glance displays of data pulled from disparate business systems to provide warnings, action notices, next steps, and summaries of business conditions.

This sounds like a corporate tool used by a stuffy manager to keep an eye on the minions without actually talking to them. It also sounds exactly like what I need at Tightrope! Being a company that is rapidly growing it is hard to keep a handle on what is happening in the business. There was a time when I knew every detail, every conversation, every email, every line of code… Now? Not so much. But that is not what I am concerned with.

I trust that everyone at TRMS is doing their job, I know they are. Everyone at Tightrope is a ‘rock star’ (not literally). What I want to do is let everyone know how ‘the company’ is doing. Because we are so busy, sometimes great things are overlooked. Like when sales blows passed their sales goal for the month, or when support has no cases in the queue.

A digital dashboard at Tightrope will be for everyone to see the health of the company. We are a very flat company, actually we are more like a funnel. I am at the bottom, supporting everyone above me. We are also very open, if something isn’t going right we want everyone to know. This environment breeds creative thinking.

I think creating awareness of the ‘health’ of the company is really important. Especially for small companies. It is hard avoid brick walls when you can’t see them coming. We try to be open with our employees about the state of Tightrope and engage them in making decisions which help us avoid those brick walls (however, sometimes we still hit picket fences).

So I am going to go through the process of creating our digital dashboard and document it here, maybe someone will find it useful.