Field notes
Preparing source systems before a dashboard build
Before design sketches begin, confirm that the source systems can produce the periods leadership wants — weekly, monthly, or trailing twelve weeks — without manual spreadsheet surgery every time.
Pick one recent closed month and reconcile a handful of KPIs against the finance or operations pack. If the numbers cannot be matched by hand, the dashboard will not fix that gap.
Identify who can grant read access and how long that takes inside your organization. Access delays are the most common reason commissions slip past their planned handover.
Note known late feeds. If one warehouse reports two days after the others, the dashboard should show freshness, not pretend everything updates at midnight.
A short source-readiness note attached to the brief keeps the commission focused on leadership views instead of emergency data cleanup.