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KPI dashboards

KPI dashboard examples

Three scorecards, each captured as it renders on a sample dataset. Not mock-ups. They are the short lists a review opens with, and the department boards behind them are the other pages in this set.
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In short

What a KPI dashboard is

A KPI dashboard is a single screen showing an organisation's most important measures against their targets, so the gap between plan and actual can be read at a glance. What separates it from a departmental dashboard is selection, not subject. Five to ten measures, each on the page because a decision hangs on it. The detail belongs to the boards underneath.

KPI dashboard examples: each dashboard, the question it answers, and the numbers on it.
Financial KPI ScorecardWhat are the four numbers a finance review opens with?Revenue, Gross Margin, Operating Margin, Operating Income
Sales KPI ScorecardIs the book healthy, or only large?Probability, Days To Close, Deal Amount, Weighted Amount
HR ScorecardWhat are the people numbers behind the plan?Tenure Months, Engagement Score, Performance Rating, Annual Salary

Every one is a Mammoth template, shown below on the sample dataset it ships with.

The examples

Three KPI dashboard examples

Each of these is a Mammoth template, captured as it renders on the sample dataset it ships with. Every figure is illustrative. The sample data is not a customer's, and no number here is a business result. They run on three separate datasets, because a scorecard binds one dataset and these numbers do not share a grain, so putting them on a single board would mean joining a ledger to a headcount file and presenting the result as a company view.

  1. Example 01

    Financial KPI Scorecard

    What are the four numbers a finance review opens with?

    Revenue, gross margin, operating margin and operating income, each carrying its direction rather than a bare value. The cuts underneath say where the margin came from and where operating cost concentrates. So the question after the headline has an answer on the same screen.

    What is on it

    • Operating income over time
    • Gross margin
    • Margin across units
    • Revenue by region
    • Where operating cost concentrates

    Your data needsDashboard

    • a revenue or money column
    • a category (~8 values)
    Financial KPI Scorecard dashboard: Revenue, Gross Margin, Operating Margin and Operating Income tiles, above Operating income over time, Gross margin, Margin across units, Revenue by region and Where operating cost concentrates.
    Sample data: illustrative figures, not business results.

  2. Example 02

    Sales KPI Scorecard

    Is the book healthy, or only large?

    Probability, days to close, deal amount and weighted amount, with reps set above and below the line. Deal size runs as a spread rather than an average. A pipeline total can rise while the shape of the book gets worse, and an average hides the two deals holding up the quarter.

    What is on it

    • Who is above and below the line
    • Distribution of deal size
    • Confidence across the funnel
    • Cycle length by region
    • Booked against weighted, by source

    Your data needsDashboard

    • a revenue or money column
    • a category (~3 values)
    Sales KPI Scorecard dashboard: Probability, Days To Close, Deal Amount and Weighted Amount tiles, above Who is above and below the line, Distribution of deal size, Confidence across the funnel and Cycle length by region.
    Sample data: illustrative figures, not business results.

  3. Example 03

    HR Scorecard

    What are the people numbers behind the plan?

    Tenure, engagement, performance rating and salary cost on one screen. Tenure runs as a spread by level. Absence and training hours are cut by where they concentrate. Headline attrition with no denominator invites the wrong reaction, so the population sits beside the rate.

    What is on it

    • Salary cost of who we hired
    • Engagement
    • Performance across departments
    • Tenure spread by level
    • Where absence concentrates
    • Where training hours go

    Your data needsDashboard

    • a revenue or money column
    • a category (~7 values)
    HR Scorecard dashboard: Tenure Months, Engagement Score, Performance Rating and Annual Salary tiles, above Salary cost of who we hired, Engagement, Performance across departments, Tenure spread by level and Where absence concentrates.
    Sample data: illustrative figures, not business results.

Design notes

What goes on a KPI dashboard

Four things the examples above have in common. They matter more than which chart you pick.

Five to ten measures, and the rest goes below

A scorecard that lists everything is a report.

A report is a different artifact. The selection is the work. Each measure earns its place because someone changes a decision on it, and everything that does not clear that bar moves to the board underneath, where it is still available to anyone who goes looking for it.

A direction, never a lone number

Revenue of 4.2 million says nothing on its own.

Each measure on these three carries its trend in the same card, so a reader gets the value and the direction without clicking into anything.

The target beside the actual

A KPI is a measure against a goal.

A screen with no plan figure on it is a metrics screen. Put the comparison on the strip itself, where it gets read first, rather than in a chart somewhere below it.

Every figure traces back to its rows

Scorecard numbers get challenged in the meeting they appear in.

That is the part people skip. The figure should trace back to the rows that produced it, and the preparation that got it there should be readable by whoever is being asked to defend it, rather than buried in a spreadsheet formula that one person wrote and nobody else has opened since.

From example to live dashboard

Pretty is easy. Current and true is the hard part.

Any of these can be drawn in a slide. What makes one worth keeping is the five steps underneath it, and they are the same five whichever example you start from.

  1. 01

    Connect the source

    The dashboard reads the system, not an export somebody saved to their desktop. 100+ tested connectors, plus anything with a REST API.

  2. 02

    Prepare it once

    Cleaning, joining and reshaping are recorded as steps you can read, change and re-run, not a formula buried three sheets deep.

  3. 03

    Check it before anyone sees it

    Data checks run with the refresh and flag the rows that fail, so a broken upstream file shows up as an alert rather than as a wrong number in a meeting.

  4. 04

    Put it on a schedule

    Refresh on a schedule and the dashboard stays current on its own. Starter refreshes weekly, Team daily, and Pro every three hours.

  5. 05

    Publish it and send the link

    Public, password-protected or sign-in only. Every sharing mode is available on every plan, including the free one.

Sharing

Everyone can see it.
Nobody pays to look.

Most dashboard tools charge for every person who opens one, which is why so many dashboards end up as a screenshot pasted into a message. Mammoth charges for the people who build. Viewers are unlimited and free on every plan, including the free one.

  • You pay for

    The people who build

    Anyone connecting a source, preparing data or publishing a dashboard counts as a platform user.

  • You never pay for

    The people who look

    Viewers are unlimited and free on every plan, including the free one. A board, a client list or a whole company: the number does not change the bill.

Plans differ in how many builders and published dashboards a workspace gets. Drafts, viewers and every sharing mode are unlimited and free on all four. Full pricing.

KPI dashboard questions

How many KPIs should one dashboard show?
Five to ten. The constraint is the reader, not the data. Past about ten measures a scorecard stops being scanned and starts being searched, which is the point at which it fails, because the whole promise of the format is that the number you needed was the one you saw first. The three above carry four each.
What is the difference between a KPI dashboard and a report?
A KPI dashboard answers 'how are we doing' in one screen, and is built to be scanned. A report answers 'what happened and why' in a sequence, and is built to be read. Same dataset, different artifact. Confusing the two is how a scorecard ends up with forty measures on it.
Where does the data for a KPI dashboard come from?
Several places at once, usually: the ledger, the CRM, the HR system, whatever spreadsheets are still load-bearing. Joining them is the work. Mammoth has 100+ tested connectors, plus anything with a REST API, so a source that is not on the list is still reachable.
How do I stop the numbers going stale?
Put the preparation on a schedule rather than redoing it by hand. In Mammoth the steps that clean and join the data are recorded and re-run, so the scorecard reflects the source rather than the last time someone exported it. How often it refreshes depends on the plan, which /pricing sets out.
Can I share it with people who do not build dashboards?
Yes, and it costs nothing. Dashboard viewers are unlimited and free on every Mammoth plan, including the free one. Only the people building count as platform users.

Last reviewed against the template catalogue.

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