Dashboards as a Service

TLDR

Marketing dashboards consolidate key performance metrics into a single display, a practice adopted by service firms across industries that can enhance marketing’s influence on top‑management decisions when challenges are overcome. This article investigates the drivers of dashboard development, explains how they are built and adopted, and identifies future research areas such as metric selection, inter‑metric relationships, and the cost‑benefit justification of dashboards. The authors outline a five‑stage development process and analyze how demand, supply, and implementation dynamics interact to drive dashboard adoption and use.

Abstract

Recent years have seen the introduction of a “marketing dashboard” that brings the firm’s key marketing metrics into a single display. Service firms across industries have created such dashboards either by themselves or together with a dashboard service provider. This article examines the reasons for this development and explains what dashboards are, how to develop them, what drives their adoption, and which academic research is needed to fully exploit their potential. Overcoming the challenges faced in dashboard development and operation provides many opportunities for marketing to exercise a stronger influence on top management decisions. The article outlines five stages of dashboard development and discusses the relationships among demand for dashboards, supply of dashboards, and the implementation process in driving adoption and use of dashboard systems. Key topics for future research include metrics selection, relationships among metrics, and the ultimate question of whether dashboards provide sufficient benefits to justify their adoption.