by Staff Writer A recent study by Deloitte Digital found that nearly half of business leaders say they are currently unable to generate insights from data to help inform real-time decision making. But in today’s competitive business climate, difficulties leveraging data to make faster, better decisions can put organizations at a significant disadvantage, affecting their ability to respond to customer needs, meet regulatory requirements, deliver products to market and a host of other mission-critical objectives.
While the Deloitte study found that 88 percent of businesses report using productivity tools to assist in decision making, many work execution platforms don’t offer the features that best empower the swift, sophisticated decisions enterprise leaders must make on a daily basis. For faster, better decisions, look for a platform with these three key offerings. by Stephen Danos on March 20, 2018 Executive dashboards are powerful business tools that can connect leaders to their entire organization through insightful data streams.
Embracing critical layers of visibility can make businesses more competitive by strengthening connections between C-level leaders, managers, individual contributors, and their stakeholders. In addition, company-wide visibility into key performance indicators (KPIs) and business critical information help connect employees to the company’s strategic vision. Executive dashboards deliver the right information from different departments, helping business leaders make the best decisions. by Staff Writer on May 10, 2018 Meetings cost businesses a lot of money.
$15 million per year, in one case. That’s what researchers at Bain & Company determined a weekly executive meeting cost one business each year. More broadly, the research found that many companies spend 15 percent of their collective time in meetings.
by Brendan Reed on April 24, 2018
Instead of scrolling through rows of data to glean insights, one well-crafted visual can make it easier to understand what’s going on, and help you make decisions more quickly. Charts can highlight outliers, trends, and other details you need to see to make the best choice for your business.
Our most recent additions to Smartsheet dashboards will help you supercharge your data visualization and give you more flexibility in your data sources, so you can get the information you need to make better-informed decisions more quickly. With our charts enhancements, you now have ten new chart variations at your fingertips for more ways to visualize your data in a dashboard. You also have the ability to create charts from reports. Add multiple data sources to one report, then create a chart from that report to bring multiple sources into one visual for a more complete picture. Not only that, but we’ve given you more flexibility on your sheet data structures for charts. Now you can select the specific columns you want to include in a chart, without needing to rearrange your sheet data to include what you want into your chart. Here’s how each of these enhancements work for you and your team to better visualize data:
by Stephen Danos on April 5, 2018
In the past, we’ve looked at how automation improves employee engagement and surveyed information workers for our 2017 Automation Report. The report showed that there are three key processes — data collection, approvals, and updates — that, when automated, give people more time to focus on high-value work.
But automation doesn’t just free up time for workers. It can also improve visibility and create accountability across an organization. By giving teams access to the same information across the board — a single source of truth to work from — they can more quickly move forward on projects. Clearer Communication
While communication tools such as email, instant messaging applications, and team collaboration software have their uses, information often gets lost in the shuffle. Sifting through messages and status updates across multiple platforms is not only a tedious process, but it creates knowledge gaps.
Teams can’t quickly and effectively communicate changes to projects or processes when information is siloed. There’s no single source of truth, making it difficult to move work forward. Using a work management platform that automates time-consuming, manual tasks makes a noticeable difference. For example, instead of wasting time racing around the office gathering metric reports from stakeholders or sending status update emails, workers can set up automated update requests to gather the information they need to get projects done. Then, that information is consolidated in one place for anyone on the project to reference.
by Joosung Nam on February 13, 2018
Even when you and your teams use Smartsheet to manage and track your work, making sure that real-time information is accessible and actionable to all stakeholders can be challenging. The level of detail that an individual contributor needs in their sheet to get work done is at once too much and not enough data for the executive level. You need to make the right information available at the right time to the right people to help them make better decisions and quickly act on data.
That’s why we’re excited to announce Smartsheet’s new dashboards (previously known as Sights™) to go along with Smartsheet’s updated look and feel. In addition to all of the capabilities you have had with Sights up until today, we’ve added the ability to create charts based on your Smartsheet data to our dashboards. While you need a Business or Enterprise license to create and edit dashboards, anyone can access dashboards that are shared with them or published, whether or not they have a Smartsheet license.
by Katy Beloof on April 3, 2018
Being a leader in an organization means that you get to make the calls on big decisions. But often executives are insulated from day-to-day operations, a distance which can compromise effective decision making. Without firsthand or detailed information about a situation, executive isolation leads to disconnected organizations, misalignment across teams, and flawed business decisions. So how can you be sure that you’re making the best possible decisions for your business?
The good news is there are simple strategies that curb isolation and help you get the perspective you need to make better decisions without slowing down. Here’s a look at three ways to get the information you need to make better-informed decisions.
by Katy Beloof on March 12, 2018
Is organizational complexity making it difficult for your teams to successfully accomplish projects on time and within budget? Multiple communication channels combined with cross-functional teamwork can cloud accountability and muddle decision-making authority, resulting in a lack of employee ownership in a project or process.
One solution to this lack of ownership and its effect on performance is “clear pressure”, a form of peer pressure based on the idea of giving employees real-time visibility into the progress of everyone’s work, so they can hold each other — and themselves — to a higher standard. But are the tools that provide visibility enough to create a culture of clear pressure? Or do leaders need to think more broadly about a solution?
by Katy Beloof on February 20, 2018
In order to stay competitive, business leaders must find new ways to make better decisions faster. A critical part of this is establishing visibility, or making sure the right people have access to the right information at the right time — in real time.
Businesses leaders need a way to free up employees to move swiftly and empower them with the information they need to execute. Leaders also need a way to see how day-to-day work is progressing, to keep their teams on track. At the same time, they need to ensure that high-level information is accurately and promptly communicated to the C-Suite, so they can more quickly make the critical decisions needed to move the business forward. With these challenges in mind, here’s a look at the three layers of visibility organizations need to make better decisions faster, execute more quickly on new initiatives, and ultimately thrive in today’s competitive market. |
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