A performance dashboard is a critical component of business performance management (BPM). Of course BPM itself is vital today to most companies who want to stay competitive, survive the downturn, and be ready for the recovery. So, getting company-wide support and ultimately rolling out a successful BPM initiative is very important. Free dashboards can jeopardize this goal. How? By being free. They allow anyone in the organization to bypass company approvals, buy-in, and therefore participation. Suppose a few well-intentioned souls in IT or Finance start using this application and then start showing it around. If they did a lousy job off on their own in the corner it will give people a poor impression of what a BPM dashboard could/should really be and turn them off to future BPM plans. More importantly, without senior participation it is almost 100% guaranteed that it will not be measuring what matters most to the organization. If it doesn't get that right, then what's the point? Going through an approval process/purchase decision elevates the visibility of the BPM project and gets buy-in (or not) at senior management levels, which is required to do BPM in a meaningful way. Technology itself is probably the least challenging aspect of BPM and this free offer is all about the technology.

On the other hand, if your organization has already bought in to BPM at the highest levels, is committed and ready to move forward, you should be able to get the senior team together to work on developing the right key performance indicators (KPIs). Once you've done that, you can use these free tools as a way to prototype your performance dashboard. Before making a big technology investment you can evaluate the level of participation and interest across the organization. When you are ready to really move forward you need to develop detailed technology requirements and go out and find the solution that best meets your needs, as you normally would. Although in this case the free dashboard performed a useful function along the way, it is highly unlikely that in the end it will be the ideal solution for this mission-critical application.