Visualization dashboards help CIOs interpret data so that they arrive at the right conclusions every time. CIOs use these tools to replace guesswork and arbitrary IT staffing levels. The best results come from CIO dashboards in Power BI that track preferred KPIs and are built around existing workflows.

By designing a well-organized dashboard, you will lead your IT teams confidently and inspire them to achieve more. 

What Can a Power BI CIO Dashboard Do? 

Microsoft’s Power BI is a platform for visualizing data. Users connect Power BI to a data source and upload their data into a visual template of their choice. There are hundreds of visuals available, designed to analyze data from many different angles. 

To save time, users can also create dashboards in Power BI that display multiple visuals on one page. With these dashboards, you can filter your data by type or range and the visuals will change automatically based on your inputs. 

A CIO dashboard in Power BI is made specifically to help CIOs perform their daily tasks and make big-picture decisions.. The dashboard features data and visuals related to the company’s IT strategy and technological needs. 

Why do CIOs need a dashboard like this? Today’s CIOs are expected to do more than ever. They must:

  • Manage IT staff schedules and performance;
  • Balance the budget;
  • Hire appropriate IT experts in every field;
  • Oversee software patches and security rollouts; and
  • Educate themselves on innovations that will drive the company forward; and more. 

CIOs often take most criticism when things go wrong with IT. One misstep or bad decision can have lasting consequences. This is why more CIOs are relying on tools like CIO dashboards in Power BI. It helps them to stay on top of staffing needs and to delegate tasks to individual team members. Data-driven CIO decisions are less likely to involve costly mistakes.

Creating a CIO Dashboard in Power BI 

Make a list of all of your responsibilities at the organization. You should make at least one dashboard for every task. These may include: 

  • Data logs: You can connect your CIO dashboard in Power BI to Microsoft’s Azure Activity Logs. This allows you to see how your data is being used and identify problems immediately. In Power BI, this information is displayed in a chart of your choice and is automatically updated whenever the SQL database is refreshed. You can check this log every day for potential issues.
  • Compliance states: Power BI linked to Intune Data Warehouse enables you to see device configurations and whether these devices are fully compliant based on your organization’s standards.
  • IT troubleshooting: CIO dashboards in Power BI can be designed to include data about server status, security issues, and devices requiring software patches. You can see which devices or hardware are currently posing a problem and get them fixed before they lead to excessive downtime or security breaches.
  • Sales, market trends, and budget: There are many visual templates for tracking these metrics in Power BI. Sales, market trends, and budgets affect the IT department and determine how much the CIO can spend on upgrades.
  • IT project tracking: CIO dashboards in Power BI include Gantt charts that can track project progress and show whether teams are meeting deadlines. 
  • Assessing current IT strategies: CIOs can keep scorecards or track KPIs for new staff members or third-party vendors to ensure that the services they provide are actually bringing value to the organization. 
  • Downtime analysis: When the system goes down, a dashboard can track when and why it happened and identify downtime trends that CIOs can use to prevent it from happening again in the future. 

If you’re still unsure exactly how to organize your CIO dashboard in Power BI, break your tasks down into one of the following categories and keep similar tasks together on a single dashboard: 

  1. Portfolio management. This includes project budgets, schedules, deadlines, staffing, staff performance, and project risk analysis. 
  2. IT health. This includes data or tasks related to downtime and uptime, training, maintenance, software patches, hardware upgrades, and changes that will reduce operational costs. 
  3. Troubleshooting and customer satisfaction. This is any data related to customer surveys, how long it takes for customers to receive help from IT staff, and how quickly IT staff can fix problems. 
  4. Big picture decisioning. Working with upper management, you can identify the core business principles that your organization follows and track overall IT performance to test whether it aligns with those drivers. For example, if your organization wants to respond to customer inquiries within 24 hours, CIOs can track this metric and ensure that IT staff are also following this company-wide guideline. This is also where you can analyze the budget to determine whether you have the resources you need to introduce a new IT strategy. 

You have so many possibilities when you build a CIO dashboard in Power BI. However, the system does have its limitations. 

Should You Make a CIO Dashboard in Power BI? 

The main limitation of Power BI is that it only tracks data after the fact. When something happens, Power BI logs it right away, but if you want to find out whether something will happen, you’re out of luck. This is a problem for CIOs because they have a responsibility to come up with forward-thinking solutions. 

For this reason, many CIOs are hiring third-party dashboard experts to link CIO dashboards in Power BI to predictive analytics software. This gives them the power to make accurate predictions. By combining Power BI visuals with machine learning algorithms, CIOs can: 

  • See how easy or difficult it would be to change the IT strategy;
  • Analyze hardware or software vulnerabilities and limitations; and
  • Project future budgets and technical requirements; and more. 

While CIOs should incorporate CIO dashboards into their workflows right now, they must also consider future needs. By discussing their options with a data analytics firm, CIOs can maximize the use and ROI of this technology. 

Are you looking for an easy way to manage your IT staff and make better data-driven decisions? Contact Tek Leaders today to learn more about our dashboard services. Our team of Power BI experts can build a custom CIO dashboard that tracks data in real time and can predict the outcomes of your decisions. To get a free audit of your current IT strategy, you can reach us by email directly.