Last week's post focused on defining a baseline for Sales Analytics.  This week, I wanted to follow up with a concrete example for Sales Managers.  Future posts will focus on some alternative views to this display as well as views that are critical for field sales representatives and Marketing managers.

Again, this is intended to represent the type of outcome you can get with an initial release of a sales dashboard when working with the standard Dynamics CRM application and reporting tools.  Let's take a look -

Note:  Feel free to click this link for a full sized image. 

A dashboard like this can be a good start for a sales organization for a number of reasons.  Let's breakdown why this format can work, and who it is primarily geared for -

1.  The display is fairly data dense and conveys quite a bit of information in one visual layout. 

2.  The specific content displayed tells a story that is critical for the manager in question.  In this case, the dashboard is broken down to tell the manager first what's in their forecast set to close in the current quarter.  This chart in the upper left provides visibility into how the team is performing and which reps have deals at which stages.   Second, the chart in the upper right displays current performance for the manager and their team with respect to closed deals with background context for prior year's sales and quota.  Thus, the top frame of the report provides immediate visibility into how each rep is performing with respect to forecast deals at key stages in the sales process, and how the team as a whole is performing compared to prior year and quota. 

The lower frame then provides visibility into a handful of second tier metrics.  In this case, the manager see a list of the largest open deals in descending order with the ability to drill through into the most recent activities associated with those deals.  The middle chart ranks individual sales reps on the manger's team based on both their closed deals this YTD, but also based on the % of deals that the rep has successfully closed in this year.  The final chart provides full visibility into the entire pipeline for all reps showing the volume of deals and dollar value at each stage.

3.  The context on the chart provides critical information to eliminate possible confusion.  In the upper left, it is noted that all currency values have been converted the local user currency (in this case USD).  Second, in the lower right, we have the option to click a link and download the data to Excel which will allow users to perform more detailed analysis, or to validate the display if their are concerns as to the validity of the data.  Third, the chart is available in the UI of Dynamics CRM but can be exported to Excel or PDF for viewing offline and to allow for printing.  Finally, in the lower left it has been clearly identified when the report was run in order to minimize the possiblity of confusion from reviewing outdated materials.

This is by no means the only design, or best design for any given organization, but it can serve as a solid foundation from which to build a sales culture oriented around data driven decision making.  I'll follow up with additional posts where we'll look at other examples that add some nuance to this display.  Some things we'll focus on in upcoming posts -

Drill through reports - The dashboard above is a good starter, but how can this grow to support more detailed questions as more and more users adopt the solution.

Pipeline trending - The dashboard above provides a snapshot of a point in time with respect to the forecast and pipeline, but many sales managers would also like to understand if the pipeline is growing, shrinking, or staying stagnant over time.  This is a critical metric that we'll work into a revised version of this view with upcoming posts.