How to Build a Strategic Portfolio Dashboard

In this article, we unpack the importance of strategic portfolio dashboards according to the Gartner® 6 Practices for Effective Portfolio Management report and how organizations can use dashboards to achieve their desired strategic outcomes.

In a previous blog, we gave a high-level overview of the 6 practices for effective portfolio management highlighted in the report by Gartner, and how it provides insights that can help solve innovation problems that business leaders agonize over. According to Gartner research, “84% of organizations that were surveyed had moderate-to-low effectiveness at portfolio management”. In short, poor portfolio management can cause businesses to fail to deliver on their innovation objectives.

So how can teams optimize their portfolio management activities?

We think one of the critical tools in undertaking effective portfolio management is a dashboard, a data visualization tool that can help provide a birds-eye view of portfolio activities. This blog analyzes the Gartner methodology for tracking leading indicators on portfolio health and how teams can use the ITONICS Dashboard to gain insights on their end-to-end innovation activities.  

The importance of a strategic portfolio dashboard

Portfolio management allows businesses to align their suite of trends, technologies and startup activities with internal capabilities alongside strategic objectives. Gartner research predicts that "by 2025, 70% of digital investments will fail to deliver the expected business outcomes due to the absence of a strategic portfolio management (SPM) approach." Gartner goes on to state that "teams need to optimize the value of all major organizational initiatives, which requires integrated portfolio management."

Dashboards are critical to tracking the effectiveness of the portfolio management process and aligning organizations. Dashboards allow teams, business leaders and sponsors alike to stay aware of how teams are interacting with the trends, technologies and opportunities all in a single source of truth, enabling a more focused stage gate process and effective strategic action.  

Building your portfolio dashboard using the ITONICS Innovation OS

The ITONICS Dashboard is a data visualization tool available in the Enterprise package that is ideal for consolidating various information relating to your portfolio. With several configuration possibilities, the ITONICS Dashboard allows you to visualize the indicators of portfolio health and providing critical insights to stakeholders and decision-makers.

Here are some steps to get you started on the ITONICS Dashboard:  

1. In the ITONICS Innovation OS go to Settings > System Administration > Dashboard Configuration
2. Click on the tab Dashboard View Configuration. Here you can see the Dashboard View Configuration of your Dashboard pages. NOTE: System statistics is a static Dashboard page
3. Add your own personalized Dashboard Page by clicking on Add Tab where you can personally configure the dashboard title and access rights by user groups. 

4. The Chart and Dashboard Configuration is where you can optimize what type of portfolio data is visualized.    
5. The interface in the Configurations Tabs reveals the options of how users can place your charts by dragging and dropping.

Pro-Tips for building your portfolio dashboard with ITONICS

• Ensure your strategic application ownership: The person in charge of assigning permissions and roles needs to be able to assign rights to different people within the organization who can act upon the insights in the dashboard and can augment the innovation activities
  
  

• Identify the ideal visualization style for your data: ITONICS Dashboard offers line charts, bar charts, stacked bar charts, and pie charts. Teams must ensure they select the type of visualization method that brings the data to life and communicates the health of the portfolio. For example, in ITONICS Dashboard, technology segmentation is better suited to pie charts and trend ratings are better communicated via bar charts.  
  
  

• Filter your chart to refine the results:  Use the filter section available in ITONICS to further narrow down the results shown in your chart. For example, filter for “Project Status Active” to only show ongoing projects (excluding projects that are completed, on hold, etc.).

To learn more about the features and functionalities of the ITONICS Innovation OS to enhance your strategic portfolio management, get your free demo with one of our experts.

Disclaimers
Gartner, 6 Practices for Effective Portfolio Management, Anthony Henderson, 26 April 2022
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.