What is the Cost of a Dashboard?

One note from the first day of the Marketing Analytics Summit and this was just one workshop…

What is the Cost of a Dashboard?

“Hey, can your team whip up a quick dashboard that shows engagement by email segment for mobile vs. desktop?”

“Sure. When do you need it?”

“Yesterday would be good.”

“OK, let me ask about how you’re going to use this dashboard. What business decisions will you be making?”

“Well, you know… We’re wondering about the effectiveness of different email layouts on a phone or an tablet, or a desktop.”

“I see. Would you like to run a controlled experiment instead?”

“No, no – just a quick dashboard, please. That’s all we need.”

“OK, we can have it to you in five months. Will the information on the dashboard still be relevant?”

“Whaaaaat? You spent all that on those fancy tools and people and it’s going to take you forever? Man, I’ll just get my nephew to pump it out for me.”

“Before you do that,  Let me show you this timeline.”

Interview users for definitions   1 week

Design the dashboard                1 week

User test the wireframe              1 week

Find the data                               2 weeks

Get the data                                 2 weeks

Clean the data                             4 weeks

Transform the data                     1 week

Load the data                             1 week

Correlate the data                        1 week

Develop the dashboard               1 week

Integrate the dashboard              1 week

Test the dashboard                      1 week

Deploy the dashboard                1 day

Train the users                             2 weeks

Repair dashboard bugs               4 weeks

Implement iteration process       2 weeks

Update forever

“Given the specialties involved, the manpower required and the padding for prioritization of other projects already in the queue, would you like to run a controlled experiment instead?”