Best Practices for Employee Adoption of Excel Dashboards

Introduction

An Excel Dashboard is a powerful data visualization tool that can be used to explore and analyze large amounts of data. The dashboard is made up of a collection of interactive tables, graphs and other visual elements. With this powerful tool, businesses can quickly discover valuable insights about their operations, provide deeper visibility into their data and make smarter decisions to optimize their business performance.

Given the vast potential of Excel Dashboards, it is important for businesses to ensure their employees adopt the technology in a timely manner. This post looks at some best practices that businesses can apply to ensure a successful employee adoption of Excel Dashboards.

Training and Education

Training and education are essential components of successful employee adoption of Excel dashboards. Providing employees with the knowledge they need to use and interpret the tool correctly is key to ensuring the successful use of any new technology. Here are some of the best practices for providing employees with training and education to ensure successful adoption of Excel dashboards.

Host Explanatory Sessions

One of the best ways to ensure successful Excel dashboard adoption is to host explanatory sessions for employees. These sessions can provide a comprehensive overview of how to use and interpret dashboard information, as well as tips and best practices for using the tool correctly. It also provides employees with an opportunity to ask questions and get feedback from an expert.

Create Learning Guides

Creating learning guides for Excel dashboards is also an effective way to ensure successful adoption. These guides can provide easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions on how to use and interpret the tool. They can also include examples and screenshots to provide employees with a better understanding of how the tool works and how it can be used most effectively.

Provide Hands-On Troubleshooting

Finally, providing hands-on troubleshooting is also important to ensure successful adoption of Excel dashboards. Having an expert available to answer questions and guide employees through the process can ensure they feel confident utilizing the tool and minimize any difficulties that may arise.

• Host explanatory sessions
• Create learning guides
• Provide hands-on troubleshooting

Communication

Communication plays an integral role in a successful employee adoption of Excel dashboards. Employees need to not only understand the function and purpose of an Excel dashboard but also the tangible benefits to their respective roles. When communicating this information to employees, it is important to keep the following points in mind.

Explain How Excel Dashboards Will Benefit Employees

Employees need to understand the purpose and importance of Excel dashboards. Everyone responds differently to new changes in their roles and often times employees can have difficulty understanding why something new is being introduced. Explain in detail how the Excel dashboards can benefit them and their job productivity. Emphasize the importance of having specific, easily accessible information at their fingertips. Demonstrate what the dashboards are capable of and how they can provide detailed and comprehensive data analysis that not only saves time but helps them to make better informed decisions.

Keep Employees Informed and Updated on Changes

It is important to keep employees updated on any changes or updates to the Excel dashboard. This helps ensure that they continue to take advantage of the benefits that come with the dashboard and stay engaged in the program. Use proactive communication strategies such as email updates, webinars and presentations to stay in contact with employees. This allows them to ask questions and stay updated on any changes to the dashboard. Additionally, make sure to provide any additional resources or guidance to help them make best use of the dashboard.

User-centered Design

Excel dashboards can offer great insights, but it is a user-centered design approach that can maximize their real potential. In order to increase employee adoption of Excel dashboards, the following best practices should be followed.

Prioritize user experience

The success of Excel dashboards largely depends on how user friendly they are. While they should cover all the necessary functionalities, they should be designed in a way that the user can easily interact with them. This means accurately prioritizing functionalities in the design and making sure that the user interface is intuitive and simple. This will ensure easier usage of the Excel dashboard.

Evaluate user needs before deploying

In order for an Excel dashboard to be useful for the user, their needs should be evaluated beforehand. It is important to consider the user’s level of technical literacy and expectations out of the Excel dashboard. This will allow the creation of a dashboard tailored to the user’s needs, rather than a generic one.

User feedback should be incorporated

User feedback is essential for understanding the needs of the user and to keep improving their experience. Therefore, once the Excel dashboard has been deployed, the feedback of the users should be taken into account in order to make adjustments accordingly and provide the best experience possible.

Data Quality

When creating an Excel Dashboard for employee adoption, data quality must be taken into account. Poor data quality can lead to incorrect metrics and analysis, which can lead to misinformed decisions. Here are a few best practices to ensure high data quality and encourage employee adoption of Excel Dashboards.

Establish Data Governance Policies

It is important that the data flowing into dashboards follows a set of quality standards. Establishing data governance policies can help ensure that the data is clean, accurate and reliable. This may include rules such as validation, standardization and archiving of data. These policies will also ensure that the data is consistent across the organization.

Monitor Performance Metrics

The performance of the dashboards should be monitored on a regular basis. This can help identify any data quality issues early, before they become more serious or begin to affect decisions. Monitoring metrics such as refresh rates, load delay times and performance scorecards can all help to analyze data quality.

Provide Necessary Data to Excel Dashboards

To ensure that Excel Dashboards can provide the most accurate insights, it is important to provide the necessary data. This means making sure that the data is up to date, complete and accurate. Data should also be audited and tracked to ensure accuracy. By providing the necessary data, employees will have access to the most accurate insights and be able to make more informed decisions.

Dashboard Maintenance

To ensure the most up-to-date data is being used, it's important to monitor and maintain the dashboards on a regular basis. Below are two best practices for maintaining your Excel dashboards:

Regularly Update the Dashboards

Employees should be expected to view their dashboards often and refresh the data to make sure outdated information is not affecting decision making. The data should be re-evaluated and updated often, because timely insights can be the difference between a successful or failed decision. Depending on the complexity of the dashboard, the frequency with which it will need to be updated will vary.

Document Dashboard Components

Every part of the dashboard should be well-documented, so that employees can understand its purpose and how to properly use the data to make decisions. This is especially important when dealing with complex dashboards, as there may be a lot of components that must be understood. All formulas and calculations used to build the dashboard should be well documented, and variables that have been used to calculate the results should be tracked in order to ensure accuracy of the data.

• Create detailed documentation of the dashboard's purpose, components and calculations
• Track variables used to calculate the results
• Verify accuracy of results using data sources

Conclusion

Excel dashboards can be a powerful tool but require a specific skill set to be effective. By following certain best practices that cover training, data organization, and ease of use, organizations can ensure that their employees have the necessary skillset to be successful and efficient at creating and using dashboards.

Summary of Best Practices

The best practices for encouraging employee adoption of Excel dashboards are:

• Consider scheduling regular training sessions for all users, to ensure that employees are familiar with the dashboard concept, from creation to consumption
• Organize data intelligently to prevent manual manipulation and reactivity problems
• Keep end-user interaction simple to minimize the potential for mistakes
• Design self-contained dashboards

Highlight the Importance of Following Best Practices

By following the best practices outlined above, organizations can facilitate a smoother adoption of Excel dashboards. This will reduce errors, minimize user frustration, and help employees confidently use Excel dashboards to their fullest potential.