The CIO's Guide to Building a Meaningful CIO Dashboard

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Abstract

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation provides CIOs and their teams with concrete steps for building a meaningful CIO dashboard. In the era of rising digital-first business strategies, CIOs and their IT organizations are facing increasing demands for creating critical strategic assets with digital capabilities. CIOs need to have effective tools for communicating performance and progress toward goals to a wide range of audiences. A CIO dashboard is a summary report that shows, in a highly graphical form, the most important metrics, KPIs, areas of measure, and information CIOs need to track. It is a useful tool used to manage all the essential IT-related information from a single point of access and help CIOs make data-driven decisions.

This document provides CIOs, IT, and senior business leadership teams with insight into using CIO dashboards to track critical IT metrics and showcase project status.

Building a CIO dashboard usually starts with identifying the target audience and level of information to be tracked, focusing on areas of the highest value to the audience. There are different types of CIO dashboards to consider, and the target audience will have a bearing on the type of CIO dashboard you develop. This presentation introduces three main types: strategic dashboards, tactical dashboards, and cybersecurity dashboards. Each type requires different metrics and information to demonstrate business outcomes (though it's important to note that metrics can drive either improvement or the wrong behavior, so be judicious about the data you choose to track). To help IT leaders prepare their CIO dashboards, this presentation provides a list of metrics and information for the three major types of dashboards. Additional metrics and information should be included based on your unique IT demands and business mandates.

Other factors to consider are the tools and formats that will be used to present the dashboards, and those decisions will depend on whether you need real-time information or point-in-time snapshots. In either case, dashboards are typically populated with data from multiple sources, and the data may be exported and integrated into a number of tools for display. Real-time dashboards may require significant integration work, whereas static, point-in-time outputs will be less demanding.

"With the acceleration of technology investments, it is more important than ever for IT leaders to communicate the value of IT and provide a financial and business justification for IT effectiveness," says Cora Carmody, adjunct research advisor with IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP). "A meaningful CIO dashboard serves as an effective management tool to enable technology and business leaders alike to make better decisions."

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