How to plan a dashboard that actually helps leadership make decisions, not just look at numbers. Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
Who this is for
CEOs, managing directors, and senior leaders who want a dashboard that supports decision-making.
Question this answers
How should an executive dashboard be different from an operational one, and what should it show?
What you'll leave with
Executive dashboards fail when they're designed by data teams for data teams. The CEO doesn't need to see how many tickets were closed or how many rows were processed. They need to see whether the business is healthy, growing, and on track.
The purpose of an executive dashboard is to answer three questions:
Layer 1: Headline status (what the CEO sees first). Three to five top-level metrics, each with a clear red/amber/green status. Revenue, pipeline, customer health, cash position, growth rate. This fits in the top third of the screen.
Layer 2: Supporting context (what explains the headlines). Trends, comparisons, and breakdowns that add context. Revenue by segment, pipeline by stage, customer satisfaction trend. This fills the middle section.
Layer 3: Drill-down (what answers "why?"). Click on any metric to see the detail behind it. Not visible on the main screen but accessible with one click. This is where operational data lives.
The right metrics depend on your business model, but most executive dashboards need some version of:
That's five metrics. Resist the urge to add more. If the leadership team needs specific operational metrics, those belong on department dashboards, not the executive one.
"Demos given" is an activity. "Pipeline generated" is an outcome.
Nothing kills dashboard adoption faster than conflicting numbers.
Meet the person
This guide comes from real projects. If it raises a question about your own system, you can ask the founder directly.
HELLO PEOPLE designs, builds and looks after AI, software, app and data solutions for Australian businesses, with senior expertise on every project and a scope agreed before work starts. For software, that means starting with how your business runs, not with the code.
Since 2007, HELLO PEOPLE has delivered more than 100 projects from Perth for small and medium businesses across Australia: custom software and apps, system integrations, data migrations, reporting and dashboards, and AI that works inside the systems a business already runs.
I lead every engagement myself. I trained in accounting before moving into IT, hold accounting and IT professional qualifications and an MBA, and bring more than 20 years of experience across sales, service delivery, inventory and compliance. I am also a PhD candidate in AI at Curtin University, researching retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), so the technology is always judged by what it does for the business.
Small and boutique. The person who scopes your software is the person who builds it, and the same person is there on launch day.
No ticket queue and no account manager in between. You hear back within one business day, usually sooner.
The first release is the start, not the end. When you need the next system, integration or report, you call the same person, who already knows your business.
Ask the author
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Kasun Wijayamanna
Founder, replies within one business day
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