Introduction
What-if analysis dashboards are powerful tools used in various business contexts to simulate different scenarios and visualize the potential impacts of changing variables. These dashboards allow users to explore how adjustments in parameters can affect outcomes, aiding in decision-making and strategic planning.
Key features of what-if analysis dashboards
Scenario Simulation: Users can modify input values (e.g., prices, sales volumes, costs) to see how these changes affect key metrics like revenue or profit. This helps in understanding potential outcomes under different conditions.
Dynamic Variables: Many platforms, such as Tableau, allow users to create variables that can be adjusted in real-time. This enables businesses to visualize the impact of changes instantly, making it easier to analyze various scenarios.
Visualization Tools: What-if analysis dashboards often incorporate graphical representations of data, making it easier to interpret results. This includes charts and graphs that display how metrics change with different inputs.
User Interaction: Dashboards often feature interactive elements where users can adjust parameters using sliders or input boxes, allowing for immediate feedback on the results of their changes.
Forecasting Integration: Advanced dashboards can integrate forecasting capabilities, allowing businesses to apply what-if analysis over projected data trends, enhancing the predictive power of the analysis.
Example of a what-if analysis dashboard
This dashboard is designed to help sales executives simulate scenarios in a sales process. It allows executives to adjust the sales targets, base salaries as well as the commission rates to get a clear picture of the compensation and performance in general based on the selected scenarios or parameters.
About the data
The data is simulated to mirror the kind of data you will find in a normal sales department. The simulated data contains sales representatives’ information such as base salaries, actual sales and target sales (from previous performances), and commission rates. These metrics enable the creation of a what-if analysis dashboard – empowering sales leadership simulate scenarios that would empower them assign the sales teams targets that are commensurate to their performance as well as have control on the compensation figures.
What can you accomplish with this dashboard?
This dashboard can help you accomplish the following.
On the left side of the view, you can find performance metrics presented in a Gantt chart.
From the above view, you can see individual actual sales (shown by the bar), individual target sales (shown by the black reference line), as well as the average target sales for the team (shown by the red reference line).
Note adjusting the target sales by a percentage value using the parameter selector, recomputes the performance showing the proportion of new target values likely to be achieved based on the prior performance.
On the right side of the view, you can see compensation metrics.
Here, you can adjust the base salary as well as the commission rate to see individual compensation based on the actual performance metrics.
At the bottom of the view, you can see a summary of all the computations.
Here, you can see the total target sales based on the adjustments made, and the proportion of sales target achievable based on prior performance. As well as the total compensation based on the selected scenarios.
Putting all these different segments together creates a what-if analysis dashboard as shown below.
Conclusion
Overall, what-if analysis dashboards serve as essential tools for organizations aiming to enhance their decision-making processes by simulating various business scenarios and visualizing their potential impacts informing on the ideal course of action. What-if analysis dashboards are commonly used in business areas such as financial planning, sales strategy, project planning among other areas.
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