Playbook: Management cockpit

Management asks for numbers that take a day to assemble

The problem

Every Monday somebody exports three reports, pastes them into a spreadsheet, fixes the same two columns, and emails a picture of the business that is already a week old. When a follow-up question comes back — why is the south region down? — the whole exercise starts again.

What you end up with

One screen with the numbers that matter, calculated on live data, plus a question box: anyone looking at it can ask "why is the south region down?" and get an answer from the same data, in the same place.

What it needs

• Access level: App Builder access.
• Instance: connected — this is entirely about live data.
• Pro app: optional; only needed if you want to store targets, or keep a history of snapshots.
• Sharing: shared with the management team, read-only is fine.

Build it step by step

1. Decide the numbers before you open the Builder. Five or six, each with an owner who cares about it. A cockpit with twenty tiles is a wallpaper.

2. In the App Builder:

   Build an app called "Cockpit" for management. Show six figures for the current month with the same period last year next to each: revenue, gross margin, new customers, open orders value, overdue receivables, and stock value.

3. Add movement, not just level:

   Under each figure show the trend for the last twelve months as a small chart. Colour improvement and deterioration differently.

4. Add the breakdown people always ask for next:

   Tapping revenue breaks it down by region, then by salesperson, then by customer.

5. Add the question box — see AI in Apps:

   Add a box where a user can ask a question in plain language about the figures on screen, answered from the same live data.

6. Make it refresh sensibly:

   Refresh when the page is opened and when the user asks, not constantly.

7. Share it read-only with the management team.

Try it

Open it on Monday morning instead of building the spreadsheet, and ask it the first question that comes to mind. If the answer takes longer than the export would have, the underlying query needs narrowing — tell the Builder which figure is slow.

Variations

• Targets — store monthly targets in a table and show attainment rather than raw numbers.
• Daily digest — pair it with an agent that messages the same figures at 07:00, so nobody has to open anything.
• Per-role cockpits — a sales one, a warehouse one, a finance one; each short.
• TV mode — a large-format page for a wall screen.

Where it can go wrong

• Heavy queries. Summaries are computed on the server across all matching records — good — but asking for a year of detail row by row is slow. Ask for totals, not lists.
• Definitions. "Revenue" means three different things in most companies. Write the definition on the screen.
• Permissions. Not everyone should see margin. Consider two versions rather than one with hidden rows.
• Tile creep. Every new tile makes the others less visible. Remove one before adding one.