Dashboards: Best Practices and Templates for COVID-19

In the midst of the current crisis, it’s more important now than ever to use data to drive decision making and ensure your organization maximizes its potential through difficult times.

We’ve seen several great examples of organizations leveraging ClearPoint dashboards and reports to enable decision making and clear communication to all stakeholders; we’ve shared a few examples below across industries to inspire your own dashboards and reports:

• Leadership Dashboard [Utility]
• Marketing Project Tracking [Non-profit]
• De-Escalation Program Tracking [Utility]
• Weekly COVID-19 Response Report [Healthcare]

Check out the case studies from each of these organizations below.

We also combined the best practices that these organizations are using into some sample ClearPoint dashboards for you to explore. If you’d like to talk to someone on our team to learn more about how you can leverage ClearPoint to build your own custom dashboard, just let us know!

We would love to talk through your needs and give you a tour to see if ClearPoint is right for you (and whether we can build your dream dashboard). In the meantime, we hope the innovative ways our clients are using data to drive their organizations forward offer inspiration for your own reporting!

Leadership Dashboard [Utility]

Managing a massive utility of hundreds of thousands of members in the midst of a crisis requires leadership have data and analysis for critical metrics and projects at the ready, plus an easy way to keep their teams and stakeholders updated as things evolve. This utility’s weekly dashboard provides the insights needed to make the best possible decisions for all stakeholders.

There are several sections to the weekly dashboard where live data is always available:

• Sales Impact

This chart is the first thing on their dashboard. It shows their sales during COVID-19 compared to the week before the pandemic started. They can easily see how much sales has increased or decreased for each class of customer, week by week.

• Finance

This part of the dashboard includes five key financial metrics related to accounts receivable, cash receipts and cash reserves. Each chart tracks the current value within red, yellow and green bands so that the leadership team can quickly see the status of their finances.

• System Engineering

This is the operating section of the leadership dashboard. It includes charts related to services, system improvements, work orders and the associated costs. To keep each section of the dashboard consistent (and easy to read) each chart has the red, yellow and green bands to show progress toward targets.

• New Contracts

This section of the dashboard includes charts that show the number and amount of new sales. It also lists new contracts that were received during the week and any that were cancelled. The location and size of each contract are included to help with decision making.

• Market Insights

This section of the dashboard includes some outside and benchmark data. It shows the market insights overall for the client’s geography so that they can help plan based on market predictions.

Each week, the leadership team receives an updated dashboard and uses the data to inform their decision making. It has enabled them to make quick decisions that are based on data and to pivot their strategy as needed so that they can serve their members, employees and other stakeholders throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Marketing Project Tracking [Non-profit]

One of the main goals of many non-profits is to provide great content to their members and other stakeholders in their community. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, one of our clients realized they needed to pivot some of their marketing projects and start new initiatives to help their members (who are on the front lines of COVID-19) get the information that they need.

E-newsletter shift

The non-profit was already publishing a weekly e-newsletter. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they realized they needed to shift the focus to providing as much related information to their stakeholders as possible. This e-newsletter is so important to the organization that it is linked to their strategic objectives. The leadership team can view progress on the weekly newsletters in the report that they receive each week.

The non-profit also tracks data related to the newsletter like number of people reading it, engagement with the email, and who it’s sent to. They can see if the COVID-19 specific content is valuable for readers and can adjust the types of content that they create based on this data.

New content development

Of course, if the non-profit is going to provide COVID-19 specific resources to their members, they first need to create the content. In ClearPoint, they can track the creation and publication of their content including new blog posts and eLearning courses.

For each piece of content, they can see who is responsible for it, the steps needed to complete it, and the expected timeline. Visualizations like Gantt charts make it easy to see which projects are on track, which are falling behind, and when they can expect content to be ready to share with stakeholders.

De-Escalation Program Tracking [Utility]

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, one of our clients, a utility serving 600,000 residents, set up a de-escalation team to help manage decision making during and after the pandemic. To help with decision making, the team created a Guidance Plan with data to back up their decisions, and a Roadmap to track objectives, initiatives and action items they need to complete. They created these COVID-19 dashboards in ClearPoint to help communicate both plans with the entire team.

Guidance Plan

Their guidance plan includes key KPIs for decision making like deaths and cases, hospital capacity, and ICU beds available. Because decisions need to be made quickly with the most accurate and recent data available, each metric is updated weekly. The team can monitor trends and compare against historical information, plus combine visualizations and analysis to drive decision making.

Roadmap

While the data in the guidance plan helps with every day decision making, the utility’s roadmap is the key communication tool for what projects they are actively working on in response to the pandemic. They are tracking all objectives, initiatives, and action items, and each has an owner and due dates assigned to ensure accountability. Anyone in the organization can go to their main roadmap dashboard to see the progress of any item—indicated by red, yellow and green status icons—and to drill down for details of the objective, initiative, or action item and to see progress over time.

The utility also realized a need to create and maintain policies to comply with rules, regulations and guidelines put in place in response to COVID. They are tracking all policies, the person responsible for each, and the required status (deployed or lifted) in a Policy Dashboard.

Weekly COVID-19 Response Report [Healthcare]

Our last example of a COVID-19 dashboard is from one of our clients on the front lines of the pandemic—a healthcare organization. Faced with new challenges and a constantly changing situation, leadership needs to make decisions and adjust quickly. Having the key data available is paramount. To facilitate this ongoing communication, the organization created a weekly report for their leadership team that includes several key sections:

• Department Summaries

Each department leader provides a summary of what has happened in the last week and what they are responsible for.

• Health and Safety Briefing

These are reminders for everyone in the organization for how to stay safe and healthy in their work and personal environments.

• Timeline of Significant Events

Includes the date and short description of events that took place related to COVID in the region that the healthcare organization serves.

• Incident Objectives

Shows the current status of all objectives, tactics and action plans that the organization is completing in response to COVID-19.

• Data Dashboard

Charts showing key metrics for the organization and benchmarks for the surrounding area. Data is tracked daily or weekly, depending on the metric.

Creating Your Dashboard

Every organization is affected in some way or another by COVID-19 and needs to make decisions about how to operate in the best interest of stakeholders. Information and data make decision making easier and allow you to get buy-in from others in the organization. Communication is also important, and when you have your data organized, it’s easy to communicate it to all stakeholders.

The data, dashboards and reports that your team needs will be different, but hopefully these examples from our clients have provided some inspiration. Convinced you need a dashboard but you’re not sure where to start? Schedule some time to talk with our team and we’ll talk through your organization’s needs and point you in the right direction.

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