That's right, we've taken ten popular movies and created a Geckoboard KPI dashboard based on the plot. Can you name all ten movies? Click below the dashboard to reveal the answer. Keep track of your own scores. (And no cheating!)

Setting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is not easy. Whether you’re deciding the One Metric that Matters or a mix of KPIs, it can be a long, iterative process to determine the precise metrics that best measure team performance or the success of your business. In fact, when we finally do get to the end of this process, we could be forgiven for thinking the hard part is over. But it isn’t. Because a good team KPI doesn’t just live in a strategy paper.

For many businesses, the run-up to the holidays is one of the most high-stakes times of the year. With consumer spending expected to rise in 2021, but consumer behaviour more unpredictable than ever, the risks are great, but the potential rewards are massive. For lots of us, whether you work in ecommerce, marketing, customer support or sales, the holiday season is one heck of a ride. So there’s no point pretending we’re not going to make mistakes along the way.

For some teams and companies, KPIs come with an infuriating paradox. The busier you are, the more important your KPIs become – but the less you look at them. Why is that? November and December are some of the busiest business months of the year. There’s Black Friday, the run up until Christmas, not to mention the squeeze created by extra holiday days.

So, you’ve just noticed a spike in your data. Maybe your trendline looks something like this? Or if you’ve caught it early, it might even look something like this: Now, obviously, I have no way of knowing if your y-axis represents something really good (like new customers) or something really bad (like system errors). And depending on which it is, you may be feeling a strong urge to pop the champagne or hit the panic button.

The dashboard is dead, long live the dashboard... Over the past year, we’ve noticed that some companies and commentators have been declaring the death of the dashboard. Understandably, that got our attention. Because here at Geckoboard, we quite like KPI dashboards. In our experience, they solve many problems and make people’s lives easier. So why do we, very occasionally, keep hearing rumours that the dashboard has ceased to be? Has the dashboard really died?

Email marketing may not always receive the same level of fame and attention as other digital marketing channels, but for many businesses, email continues to be the backbone of their communications plan. Whether it’s increasing direct sales or supporting your longer term brand building, the performance of your email marketing strategy can have significant implications for the health of your business, overall.

We don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that an effective dashboard can genuinely change how a business operates. We live in an age where even small companies can be sitting on millions of data points. Yet too often, valuable information goes unseen (or at least – unseen by the right people at the right time). Dashboards make sure your most important data – the data that can shape decisions and drive action – remain in sight and front of mind.