Or, boy I am I oblivious.

Eric Peterson lobbed this my way a week ago and I just noticed it a few days ago (I’ve been hard at work on a response).

His basic question, if I may restate it, is “What do I think about using a ‘tachometer‘ to display KPI data?”

The short answer is, I love to do this - when it’s practical.

If you work in Excel, it is often not practical because the level of initial work and maintenence needed to operate a custom chart element like this violates the efficiency rule (remember, that in order for reports to be truly effective, they need to be easily repeatable so that they can be delivered efficiently and on time). In other words, I’m lazy and it is, generally speaking, too much work for not enough return.

That being said, I’ve spent the past couple of days approximating the dashboard that Eric refers to (via Dashboard Spy and courtesy of Subaru) in Excel, to see if it could be done - with the proper wherewithal.

Here’s a screen grab of the finished product:

Ok, so it can be done.

Here’s a list of resources you’ll need to pull it off:

• Andy Pope’s Gauge Work Around
• John Peltier’s Speedometer Work Around
• Apps Pro X/Y Chart Labeler
• Excel Camera Tool

Scared yet?

Ok, here’s my file for the above picture, you’re welcome to try it out (no commercial use, please), but I make no warranty as to the accuracy or stability of it.

Long story short, custom dashboard elements like the above are cool, sexy and can effectively communicate important information such as KPIs, but hopefully you have a better platform than Excel to create them in (this is where something like Xcelsius becomes helpful).