Your association needs to be able to capture, view, and interpret data to make the best decisions for continued success. A data visualization or dashboard tool can make a big difference in your ability to accomplish this.

Take my experience as an example. An association that I worked with had a one-year goal to increase membership by 20 percent. As an organizational incentive, we had IT set up a dashboard display like a scoreboard, showing our progress each month. It provided two clear data points: how many members we had, and how close we were to reaching our goal.

Behind the scoreboard, we had a dashboard that contained the lead measurers— tactics that would move us closer to the goal. This data included membership retention, the number of contacts made with potential members, and the different categories of membership.  By focusing on the KPIs through a dashboard, we exceeded our goal.

Whether a dashboard’s purpose is to incentivize performance or drive continuous insights, it’s crucial to have one. Here are some questions that might help you to develop or rethink a dashboard.

Step 1: Begin With the End in Mind

Ask: What do you want to measure and why? What are the business drivers or key performance indicators (KPIs) for your organization? What programs and revenues are most critical to achieving your mission? For many associations, this includes membership dues, conference attendees, and the number of certifications.

Step 2: Define Your Audience and Their Needs

Ask: Who are you giving this information to, and how will they use the data? What will get everyone on the same page, working toward a common objective? The dashboard you provide to your board of directors will need to be a 30,000-foot-view of the organization.  Meanwhile, an internal dashboard for a membership team can be more granular and should contain the key lead and lag metrics toward achieving your goals.

Step 3: Limit the Amount of Info to Display

Ask: What data is most important to help you reach organizational goals? Will the amount of data that’s displayed fit on one screen or one slide? To streamline your display, I suggest that you:

• Involve senior leadership and get their buy-in.
• Gather different perspectives and create a draft visualization for feedback.
• Start with a few common KPIs that materially impact your organization.
• Assess after a few months and modify as necessary.

Best practices for dashboard design begin with the principles that users must be able to see, share, and act. The data effectively impacts your association only if critical decision makers use the dashboard.

Step 4: Control the Data

Ask: What data do you already collect? How—and how often—will you collect more? What tools will you use to report the data? Do you need new software to expedite the process?

If it’s going to take many hours every month to pull the information together, it’s not going to get done. Work with IT to export data, save time, and create greater accuracy. Automate for real-time access based on how often you need to create a report.

Step 5: Determine How to Visualize the Data Effectively

Ask: What format should the data take—charts, graphs, something else? How will each data set be differentiated from others? Which parts will be accessible, configurable, and interactive to users? Best practices for dashboard design begin with the principles that users must be able to see, share, and act. The data effectively impacts your association only if critical decision makers use the dashboard.

Step 6: Adopt Ways to Analyze and Apply What You Learn

You have the aggregated data, so now what? It’s important to move the data from measuring to solving problems. Some ways to address this are:

• Identify industry benchmarks against which you compare the data.
• Establish levels for KPIs that alert you to when something has been addressed.
• Develop a framework for drawing conclusions from the data and align measurements to decisions and decisions to strategic goals.

Step 7: Understand This Is a Continuous Process

Ask: What is and isn’t working, and why? Are people using the dashboard? Why not? What additional indicators should be on the dashboard? Keep asking these questions as you go. Be flexible and try different options, because you won’t get it exactly right the first time.

With a data dashboard in place, you will have more control over your association and make better, faster, and more informed decisions that will benefit employees, members, and other stakeholders. Involve your dashboard users and ask for feedback. You’re all working toward the same goal—a better and more sustainable association.