Posts Tagged ‘Business Intelligence Dashboards’
Posted By Dashboard Crafter / 15th July 2010
One of my customers is a large company that generate a few hundred reports on a daily basis, many of them unwanted, unused or unrepresentative of the business. The business is largely driven by the technology that provides financial services to a unique sector. The business understand the challenges, but being a technology-driven company, is heavily reliant on the Information Technology department to deliver the goods.
I’ve been trying to slowly push the concept of implementing a Business Intelligence platform and finally managed to get the ear of the CIO, who told me “Well, I like your idea. Tell you what, provide a quick demo and if I like it I’ll take it to the Business people.” I was excited, and immediately began probing to see which processes would be the best to map for a proof-of-concept demo.
I came away feeling that what will really seal the deal would be a whizz-bang demo showing a hierarchy of dashboards, each boasting fancy graphs of many colours, with hover and click effects, and perhaps soothing music playing in the background. “Make it look nice, and add our logo to the page, ” I was reminded.
This got me to wonder to what extent dashboards needs to be technology focused. In this fast changing technological environment, dashboards have to be – technologically speaking – responsive, relevant and multi-leveled and a good dose of technology is required to provide that. However, at some point, the dashboard has to stop being a technological gimmick and start being reflective of the business environment. At this point, responsiveness, relevance and multi-levelness must be about the business processes, and the technology used to present the information starts to become less and less relevant, as the data presented is probed to deeper levels.
Building a dashboard therefore requires a good balance between the technology used and the information it provides. Far too often, a dashboard project is embarked on largely because of the eye-candy it provides (normally compared to current solutions). Over time, the new bells and whistles become old-hat, and the business is no further from where it was prior to the project. So we wait for the next big technological wave…and the cycle continues.
A dashboard should be one of the deliverable of the strategic intent of the organisation to provide the business with meaningful information. It should be guided by a information management strategy, which should covers all aspects of delivering information to the business. An analysis must be undertaken to understand what is being presented, to whom, and how that information is used by the business. Skipping this portion of the project will bring the whiz-bang, but will run out of flavour as soon as the ooh-aahs subside.
Before embarking on your next dashboard project, ask whether the strategic intent is balanced well with the technology you are presenting.
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Posted By DashboardWire / 13th June 2010
I would first like to thank Hubert aka the Dashboard Spy for providing the opportunity to blog!
A fellow dashboard designer asked me to reprint this article. He’s asking if anyone can add to this explanation of a business dashboard and the explanation of the dashboard metaphor
So what’s behind the dashboard? Is it really like a auto dashboard?
Why do you need a dashboard? What are you measuring? Why are you measuring it? Why is it important? Is it really important or just nice to know? Now that you have this information, what are you going to do with it? Will this information change how we make decisions? If we had this information X month’s ago, would we be somewhere different today? I.e. would it have caused a change in prior behavior that would have led us down a different path? Does another “dial” on the dashboard tell me the same thing in a different way? Do I need to know this information every day/week/month/year? What is the relevant timeframe to provide the information? I STRONGLY encourage everyone to ask these questions of their dashboards. Write out the answers. REALLY, write them out. Take the time and you will gain new insight that you may not have had before, and may eliminate some extra stuff on you dashboard.
The Tach.
Here is a real world example of what I mean (with a real dashboard). My car has an automatic transmission. It also has a tachometer on the dashboard. Why? What does knowing engine speed tell me, other than how fast the engine is running and that it is running? Nothing. It is just extra stuff to fill up my head as I drive down the road. If the engine quit running, all the other dash lights would come on and tell me the engine was stopped, my speed would be dropping, etc. If I know engine speed that’s ok, but I cannot do anything about it other than step on the gas or brake (as opposed to a car with a manual transmission where I need to know engine speed to optimize gear changing for either fuel economy or performance). It really is useless to know since I can get the same information elsewhere. I watch the tach go up and down and I can tell that the car shifted gears since I can feel it usually. But again, why do I care, I don’t care what gear I am in since I bought an automatic transmission. It takes care of that for me.
The Temp.
I like having the outside temperature gauge on my car so I know how hot or cold it is outside. But didn’t I know that before I got in the car (other than long road trips where you might really have a large temperature change). Again, WHY do I need to know that? Is in nice to know? Probably, but can I do anything about the outside temperature? Can I make it hotter or cooler? Now what if the temperature has dropped below freezing on a trip? Then I really need to know so that I can be more alert for icy patches of road. Now it is something I NEED to know. But only during certain conditions. So there is value to it, but not all the time.
So What?
I hope these two examples will get everyone to think about why they are putting information on a dashboard and how frequently that information needs to be presented. Sure there are a lot of things that are nice to know, but don’t we all have too much information coming at us from all directions? Let’s try to make our dashboards really stand out by having just what we need on them to really manage a company/division/department/process/etc. Just because you can put something on a dashboard does not mean that you should. Think of networking your toaster in your kitchen. You can put it on your home network but WHY?
Thank you for your time reading this. I would like any feedback or your thoughts.
Paul
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Posted By DashOfInsight / 25th May 2010
http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/numbers.html
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Posted By toddlane / 13th March 2010
My favorite commercials from the Winter Olympics were for the film, How to Train Your Dragon, and for Jay Leno’s return to The Tonight Show. Watch the animated vignettes for How to Train Your Dragon, specially created for the Olympics and showing the “Viking origins” of several Winter Olympics events, here. Watch The Tonight Show commercial here.
I was impressed by DreamWorks’ effort to create humorous vignettes just for the Olympics, and I think The Tonight Show commercial was a quick, humorous way to promote Jay Leno’s return, playing on Jay Leno’s car collection.
Although I haven’t found advertising pricing information for the 2010 games, this news release from January 2010 indicates that the average price of a 30-second commercial for the 2006 Winter Olympics was $224,600. For at least that amount this year, advertisers must be keen to get as much feedback as possible on their impact. Nielsen Ratings showing the number of viewers of the Winter Olympics were great, but what about consumer sentiment?
- Dashboard showing topic track and awareness reports for How to Train Your Dragon
I used social media monitoring product Biz360 to create two dashboards that monitor social-media activity for How to Train Your Dragon and The Tonight Show in the last 30 days. How to Train Your Dragon was mentioned 3,879 times in social media outlets. The topic track and other reports include comments in addition to original posts. Its high point before the Olympics was 93 mentions on one day; during the Olympics, its coverage steadily climbed, reaching a peak of 231 mentions on one day. Following the Olympics, coverage remained steadily over 100 mentions per day. Sentiment was 59.4 percent positive; 35.4 percent neutral; 2.7 percent negative; and 2.4 percent mixed. I can see all outlets where it was mentioned, the measure of sentiment for each outlet, the number of mentions per day, and I can even drill down to each individual mention.
- Dashboard showing The Tonight Show trend and sentiment reports
The Tonight Show was mentioned 19,596 times in social media outlets over the last 30 days. Coverage rose from a low point of 245 mentions on one day before the Olympics to 1,035 mentions on one day during the Olympics to 3,289 mentions on March 2, the day after Jay Leno returned to the show. Sentiment was 57.4 percent positive; 25.1 percent neutral; 11.7 percent negative; and 5.8 percent mixed. The top outlet was Digg, with 712 items.
My dashboards show that both How to Train Your Dragon and The Tonight Show are doing well in social media outlets. How to Train Your Dragon will likely receive many more mentions after it is released on March 26th, just like The Tonight Show did after Jay Leno’s return.
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Posted By DashboardWire / 11th March 2010
In my prior post, I discussed the fact that my car has a tach but an automatic transmission and the relative uselessness of the tach. But my car, a Saab, does have a redeeming feature that is a GREAT dashboard example! The Night Panel button. This does not exist on any other car manufactured and is derived from the history of Saab making aircraft.
The Night Panel
While driving in the dark, all the instruments glow brightly unless you turn down the dash lights. But that sometimes dims the information you need to see so it is somewhat of an all or nothing proposition. Enter Saab with the Night Panel button. When you push the night panel button all the dash and control lights are dimmed enough so you can see where they are and what they are, or they are turned off completely. What you end up with is just the speedometer lit and nothing else. That pesky tach is turned off, the gas gauge, turbo boost gauge, and the temperature gauge. The info display showing date, time, radio controls, heater controls are all turned off completely. Now you see just what you NEED to see RIGHT NOW. Not the nice to know information, just the critical needed information. So the speedometer is lit up, but only partially. What, partially? It only lights to about 90 mph. Probably not going to be going over 90 in the dark so it is turned off. However, if you go over about 83 mph, then the rest of the speedometer lights up so you see it.
What Happens Next Will Amaze You!
So what happens next? What if I need to see something else? Good question. If you are getting low on fuel, then the fuel light comes on just below a quarter tank. Now you are informed about something that you need to know when you need to know it. You didn’t care before, but now you do and the dash lets you know right away. It gives you adequate time to find more fuel BEFORE the car runs out of gas. How about all the other controls, what happens with them? If you change the radio station, the controls light up for several seconds to show the new selection and then dim again. Same with the heater controls. So you make an adjustment and it shows your actions. If all systems are still good within parameters, then the lights dim again. Now that is a great example of a dashboard! Brilliantly simple.
How Can I Apply It To My Dashboards?
Keep it simple (have we heard that before somewhere?). Put a review date on your entire dashboard AND all the individual components. You might need to track something for a few months then the conditions change so you don’t need to follow it anymore. Let it go. Maybe even document somewhere the dashboard layouts and why they exist. Track changes and document why it changed. Let new hires look at the dashboard and change document for insight into how your company lives and breathes. Having worked my way up thru the various levels of accounting and finance at different companies, it is still amazing to see what reports are still being generated with no real reason for their existence anymore. It was relevant, but not anymore. Let it go. Be disciplined in your review of the dashboard. It forces you to do a review of what is really important NOW in your company.
Paul
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