Facility Management Dashboards: 3 Mistakes To Avoid

Can you imagine playing a game without a scoreboard? It would be frustrating to keep track of how much time was left, who’s in the lead and by how much. Fans would argue constantly and even lose interest with no way to see where they stand. 

It’s the same way when you’re working in facility management without a dashboard.

Without agreed-upon metrics that are visible to facilities managers, executives and other key stakeholders, it’s impossible to know whether your workplace is improving space utilization, making the best use of your assets and keeping maintenance costs down.

Enter the Insights module. The reporting feature of our IWMS includes dashboards that make it easy to see the real-time data you need to make informed decisions.

Avoid These Facility Management Mistakes

Setting up the facility management dashboard is easy, but there are a few common mistakes you’ll want to avoid.

Using Too Many Colors

If your dashboard looks like a psychedelic rainbow, it’s going to be difficult to read. Limit your dashboard to just a few colors that are distinct enough to stand out without competing.

Pro Tip:  You can even customize your colors to match your brand. Add ‘Property’ and select ‘Color’, then enter the color hex code of the color of your choice.

Trying to Show Too Much Detail

Your dashboard should be like the odometer on your car or the screen on your FitBit. You should be able to just glance at it and see how you’re doing within seconds.

Keep your dashboard simple by limiting the inputs to just a few factors that are most important. Those factors should support your goal. For instance, if you’re trying to reduce maintenance costs, your dashboard can show costs by department.

Using Too Many Graphs

Again, you want your dashboards to be so easy to view that you and your facility managers feel compelled to check them frequently. If your graph has five or more categories, each element will be smaller and more difficult to see. Break the categories into broader buckets, such as 24-48 hours, 48-72 hours and 72 hours+.

Best Practices For Using Facility Management Dashboards

A well-designed dashboard is addictive; you can’t help checking it often. It becomes your go-to source for facility management metrics and makes it easy to report progress to the C-suite.

Here are a few ways to make your dashboards addictive.

1. Customize Your Dashboards

Setting up custom dashboards allows you to see only the information that’s most relevant to you and filter out the rest.

If you’re a corporate real estate leader, you can set up a dashboard within your IWMS software that shows you:

• The number and locations of properties being leased
• Monthly and yearly lease obligations
• Lease abstracts—including contract dates, renewal options and monthly payment
• Utilization at building- and portfolio-level
• Total capacity vs. actual occupancy

Similarly, a facilities manager can set up a dashboard that shows them:

• The number of work orders by request type
• Number of work orders for reactive maintenance v. scheduled maintenance
• Maintenance costs by building
• Which assets and buildings have required a higher than average number of service requests

2. Link Reports to Dashboards

If you want to take a deeper dive into the information, you can drag and drop a report directly into your dashboard. All changes made to your report will be updated within the dashboard.

3. Maintain Control Of Your Dashboards

You can change your dashboard’s settings to “private” so that you’ll see the information that’s most relevant to you each time you log in. If you want to share your dashboard with others, you can make it public and grant access to operators, managers and administrators. To maintain control of the data, just make a copy that’s public and keep your own dashboard private.

A Facility Management Dashboard to Meet Your Needs

Dashboards are a powerful way to keep score of facility management metrics and have easy access to the information you need to make smarter decisions about space management, asset management and more in a facility management software

Not using our Insights report management software yet? Request a demo.

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in June 2018 and has been updated for accuracy and relevance