At Union Investment – the German asset management group – Corporate Communications has introduced a Communications Dashboard to provide its senior executives with relevant metrics for Media Relations. A Communications Dashboard is a simple and impactful way to visualise the results that have been achieved by communication activities.
Each quarter the media relations department internally communicates its progress and performance with this new tool. The Communications Dashboard is interactive and can be hosted on an intranet, in Powerpoint as well as in other formats.
The project started in September 2006 with a team exercise to define communication objectives, set measurable goals, and then turn those goals into measures and metrics to be displayed in the dashboard. Internal clients as well as senior executives provided input on a selection of metrics they would deem to be most important. The dashboard now comprises data from a media relations database as well as media content analyses, journalist surveys and customer satisfaction surveys.
The Communications Dashboard was designed with a ready to use software in January 2007. The benefits of the Communications Dashboard: It offers a quick and effective solution to display the relevant metrics. To facilitate its diagnostic and predictive needs it allows a “drill-down” view to detailed information. As it is visually more interesting than a long written report it more likely catches interest.
It has changed the conversations between the Media Relations department and senior executives into more focused, strategic discussions. Based on a software tool it is easy to update, with all metrics being measured on a quarterly basis. The project as such has helped to achieve greater clarity on the goals within Corporate Communications. Currently an Event as well as an Internal Communications Dashboard have been developed. Moreover, the management has initiated a project to demonstrate the value that Corporate Communications adds to support the company’s strategy.
