What should a commercial dashboard show for each role?
Each role needs a different first screen: a rep needs what needs them this week in their own territory, a manager needs team pace against goal and who needs help, and commercial operations and leadership need national pace, whether the data is current and complete, and patient access. One dashboard for everyone fails because each role acts at a different level, so the same week can read as a beat in a territory and a miss nationally.
| Role | First questions | What answers them | How often they look |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rep | What needs me this week? Am I on pace? | One ranked list for their territory: pace against goal, accounts whose units fell, accounts not called in 60 days, new referrals from their prescribers | Daily, and Monday for the week just closed |
| First-line manager | Is my team on pace? Who needs help? | Territories by quarter pace, lowest first, with last week's units and calls against goal | Weekly, once the week closes |
| Commercial operations | Is the data current and complete? Are we on pace? | Each feed's data-through date, unmapped sales and their share, national and regional pace | Daily for the data, weekly for pace |
| Leadership | Are we on pace, and where are we behind? Are patients starting therapy? | National pace against goal, regions by pace, patient cases waiting longer than usual | Weekly, and at month and quarter end |
| Patient services | Which patients are stuck, and where? | Open cases waiting longer than usual in their step, with patient detail, and late refills | Daily |
Why one screen for everyone fails
A single dashboard, even one filtered by territory, usually leads with national totals and trends. Three things go wrong:
- Each role acts on something different. A rep acts on accounts and HCPs, a manager on territories and reps, and commercial operations on the data itself: a feed that stopped, a site not mapped to an account. A screen built for one pushes the others' first question below the fold.
- The same week reads differently at each level. In the example below, one closed week is 127% of goal in a territory, 106% in its region and 94% nationally. Each is right for its scope, and none answers the other two people's question.
- Some numbers belong to one chair. Sales to sites not yet mapped to an account count nationally and in no territory, so they belong to commercial operations, not the rep. Patient detail belongs to patient services: the field can see that a prescriber's patient is waiting without seeing who the patient is.
Every number here comes from the synthetic dataset behind the open demo, read on Monday, October 12, 2026. It models a small biotech with one injectable brand and 60 territories in 8 regions, each region a first-line manager's team. Calls, hub status and specialty pharmacy data all run through October 12. Sales read through Friday, October 9, because one distributor sends a weekly file and the next one hadn't landed, and the demo waits for it rather than count days that are missing a distributor. There are no real patients, prescribers or accounts in it.
The example sits in each of the demo's three chairs: its rep (one territory, Greater Los Angeles), its manager (the Western Region, 8 territories, the rep's included) and its commercial operations lead (national). Weeks run Saturday to Friday, named by the Friday they end, so the week ending October 9 is the last closed week and the week ending October 16 has no sales in it yet. Pace counts weekdays, Monday to Friday. The quarter has 66, and each goal is spread evenly over them: October 9 is the 7th weekday, so unit pace compares units to date with the quarter goal times 7/66, and a week's goal is the quarter goal times 5/66. Each measure runs to its own data's date, so call pace runs to October 12, the 8th weekday (8/66). Unit goals are set per territory, call goals per rep, and units are net of returns.
The rep: what needs me this week
| Question | What the rep's screens show | Where in the demo |
|---|---|---|
| How did last week go? | 24 units against a goal of 19, and 24 calls against 20, in the week ending Oct 9. The week before was 14 units | Scoreboard |
| Am I on pace this quarter? | 36 units by Oct 9, the sales data's date: 136% of the 26.5 expected by then on a quarter goal of 250. Calls by Oct 12, the calls data's date: 32 against a quarter goal of 269, 98% of the 32.6 expected | Scoreboard |
| Which accounts need me? | The two that fell most: each 1 unit in the last 13 weeks against 16 in the 13 before. Six accounts are down in all | Today and Accounts |
| Which accounts have slipped? | 46 accounts called in the last 12 months have gone 60 days or more without a call, none of them Tier 1 | Today and Accounts |
| What's new with my prescribers' patients? | A new referral on Oct 9 from a Tier 2 prescriber in the territory, last called 3 days ago, and a Tier 1 prescriber's patient waiting 49 days for a PA decision. Neither item shows who the patient is | Today |
| How is this week going? | No sales days in yet. The week ending Oct 16 starts once sales reach Saturday, and it isn't compared to goal until it closes | Scoreboard |
Everything here is the rep's own territory, and most of it names an account, an HCP or a prescriber to act on. The territory is ahead on units (136% of pace) and close to pace on calls (98%). Today raises pace only when it falls below 85%, so on this Monday it opens with the two accounts that fell most. Read last week's 24 units next to the week before (14) before calling it a trend. "Last 13 weeks" counts closed weeks only: with sales through Friday it holds all 13, July 11 to October 9, and while a week is open it holds 12 (why two reports show different numbers explains the convention). The national number isn't on the rep's screen at all.
The manager: who on the team needs help
| Territory | Units, quarter to date | Expected by Oct 9 | Pace | Last week: units (goal) | Last week: calls (goal) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Summit 25 | 81 | 117.8 | 69% | 49 (84) | 10 (19) |
| Atlantic 8 | 69 | 89.1 | 77% | 40 (64) | 16 (18) |
| Vista 16 | 11 | 12.2 | 90% | 11 (9) | 20 (15) |
| Summit 7 | 37 | 40.8 | 91% | 29 (29) | 18 (19) |
| Greater Los Angeles (the rep's) | 36 | 26.5 | 136% | 24 (19) | 24 (20) |
| Pacific 10 | 72 | 52.9 | 136% | 48 (38) | 19 (18) |
| Liberty 11 | 144 | 83.4 | 173% | 99 (60) | 21 (18) |
| Summit 19 | 32 | 13.8 | 232% | 32 (10) | 8 (18) |
| Region | 482 | 436.5 | 110% | 332 (312) | 136 (144) |
The region is at 110% of pace and beat last week's goal, 332 units against 312. The rep's 136% sits in the top half. Summit 25 is furthest behind, at 69%: 81 units against 117.8 expected. Team lists it first, and it also finished the last quarter short, at 82% of goal (904 units against 1,102). Almost all of its units this quarter (77 of 81) were bought by specialty pharmacy sites in the territory, so check which accounts moved before asking the rep why.
Seven weekdays into a quarter, one week moves pace a long way: Summit 19 sold 32 units last week against a weekly goal of 10, which puts it at 232% of pace a quarter after it finished at 65% of goal. Until the quarter has a few weeks in it, read pace next to last week and last quarter. Calls get their own column because they are their own goal, set per rep: Summit 19 made 8 calls last week against 18.
Commercial operations and leadership: is the number right, and are we on pace?
| Question | What the commercial operations screens show | Where in the demo |
|---|---|---|
| Is the data current? | Calls, hub status and specialty pharmacy data run through Oct 12. Sales read through Fri Oct 9: one distributor's weekly file for the days after hadn't landed, so the other five distributors' sales for Oct 10 to 12 wait for it | Trust |
| Is it complete? | 38 ship-to sites in the sales data aren't mapped to an account yet. In the last four closed weeks they took 335 of 5,684 units (5.9%) | Trust |
| Are we on pace? | 2,187 units by Oct 9. Pace counts the 2,055 credited to territories with a goal: 100% of the 2,053 expected by then on a quarter goal of 19,359 | Scoreboard |
| How did last week go? | 1,372 units against a goal of 1,467 (94%), and 897 calls against 996 (90%) | Scoreboard |
| Which regions are behind? | Eight regions run from 79% to 122% of pace. The manager's region is second from the top, at 110% | Team |
| Are patients getting through access? | 2 open cases waiting longer than usual, both for a payer's prior authorization (PA) decision: 49 and 42 days so far, where 9 in 10 cases in the last two years took 27 or fewer | Access |
The first two rows come first because every number below them depends on them. Here the data is current, and 5.9% of recent units sit at sites no territory owns yet. Those sites are why the national total and the national pace count different things. The total counts every sale (2,187 units). Pace compares like with like: only units credited to a territory with a goal (2,055, the same sum Team adds up), against those territories' goals, which puts it at 100%. A line under the pace names what it leaves out, the 132 units shipped this quarter to unmapped sites. Both numbers are right as long as the screen says what each one counts.
Leadership reads the same national view, less often. The demo doesn't offer patient services as a chair, but its commercial operations chair opens the same list of waiting cases. The 49-day case is the one on the rep's Today, where it shows the prescriber and not the patient. A patient services lead would work that list daily, with each patient's details, along with late refills.
The same week, three readings
| Rep | Manager | Commercial operations | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scope | 1 territory | 8 territories | 60 territories and unmapped sales |
| Week ending Oct 9: units against goal | 24 of 19 (127%) | 332 of 312 (106%) | 1,372 of 1,467 (94%) |
| Quarter pace, sales through Oct 9 | 136% | 110% | 100% |
| Checks first | Its own pace and accounts | The territory furthest behind | Whether the data is current and complete |
Each reading is right for its scope. One dashboard would make one of them the headline, and two of the three people would dig for theirs.
What to leave off a first screen
- Vanity totals. Units since launch, calls this year, HCPs in the CRM: numbers that only grow and are compared to nothing. Put every first-screen number next to a goal or the period before.
- Open weeks compared to goal. On October 12 the five distributors that send daily already had 3 units for the rep's territory dated Saturday to Monday, a weekend and a federal holiday, while the sixth distributor's sales for those days were still to come. Against the weekly goal of 19, those 3 units would read 16% and mean nothing. Label the open week open, and compare it to goal only once every distributor's data reaches Friday. See which time period each sales report should use.
- Numbers without a date. Every number needs its period ("week ending Oct 9") and the date its data runs through. "Refreshed today" says when a job ran, not whether the sales data arrived. See is my data fresh.
One definition per number
Screens by role only work if a word means the same thing in every chair. In the example, the rep's quarter and the manager's row for that territory both read 36 units and 136%, because both count the territory's credited sales against the same goal. If they disagreed, people would stop trusting both. Settle each definition once, write it where everyone can read it, and use it on every screen:
- Units: net of returns, and whether a total includes unmapped sales (why two reports show different numbers).
- The week: the day it starts, and when it counts as closed (which time period each report should use).
- Data through: the date each feed is complete through (for a feed from several senders, the slowest one that sends every weekday), not when a job ran (is my data fresh).
- Sales credit: the one territory that counts an account aligned to two (which territory gets the credit).
- Goals and pace: sales goals by territory, call goals by rep, pace against the goal spread over the period's weekdays and prorated to each measure's own data-through date (setting goals).
- Calls: what counts as one. In the example, an account counts once per day, channel, and live call or drop-off.
- Time to therapy: where the clock starts and stops (how long it takes to start therapy).
James Waterman builds commercial analytics for small biotech teams. hello@aimlitics.com
Ardlow gives each role its own first screen from one set of definitions, and its open demo lets you sit in each chair: the rep, the manager and commercial operations.