Excel-based Enterprise Dashboard – excel worksheet xls file download

Posted on April 20, 2006 by Dashboard Spy

Dashboard Spy Update: Several readers have recommended the Charley Kyd eBook on using Microsoft Excel for Business Dashboards. I have started reading it myself and it is excellent. There are also many excel dashboard templates available as well. Use this link: http://tinyurl.com/exceldashboard

The best way to get started in using Microsoft Excel for business dashboards is to grab an existing excel dashboard, take it apart and try it out on your own data. Here is a post that shows such a spreadsheet dashboard with a link to the xls file.

I see that many of you Dashboard Spies out there are very interested in the tried and true excel spreadsheet approach to dashboards. Thanks to a download from javaplanetinc.com, there is this excel dashboard xls file for you to play with. Here are 2 screenshots. The first shows the graphic presentation of the data. There are 2 larger sections across the top of the screen. On the left is a pie chart showing salary by department and on the right side, we have a simple listing of outstanding balances. Below this section we have 4 smaller portlets (sales by region, budget by project, current output by plant, and sales by business unit). To show you that this is straight excel, I’ve taken a screenshot of the second sheet in the workbook. Try this with your own data and see what you come up with. Remember to send us your dashboard screenshots so that we can all learn how executive dashboards apply to your business.

Business dashboard screenshot

excel-based dashboard

Homework: Don’t ignore excel as a dashboard tool. It’s graphing ability is powerful and the number of users is unmatched. If you need a refresher on the tool, see these books on excel.

Reading Assignment: Continuing on our study of the Malik book on implementing dashboards, please read this passage and think about how your company would go about choosing a dashboard vendor:

VENDOR SELECTION

There were four key criteria and feature requirements during the vendorselection process:

1. Web based for ease of access, administration, upgrades, security, andso on

2. Industry standard to ensure that experienced resources could be hired

3. Recognized and well-respected leader in the online analytical process-ing field

4. Company that spends a better than average percentage of revenues onR&D to ensure that applications remain competitive

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books.

Corporate Dashboard Implementation Trends

Posted on April 19, 2006 by Dashboard Spy

Dashboard implementation statistics. Ever wonder how many companies have implemented business intelligence dashboards or how far along they are in the process? Take a look at the graph below from this computerworld article on dashboard implementations. Looks like there is plenty more growth to come in the enterprise dashboard space.

When enterprise dashboards reach a critical mass, and you’re fielding all those head hunter calls, you’ll be glad you were a reader of The Dashboard Spy “back in the day”. Remember the recruiting mania for talent in the ERP (Enterprise Resource Package) heyday? And i’m not just talking about technical talent. How about all those on the functional side that suddenly became so invaluable? This type of graph, by the way, is not the most intuitive to use for many people, but it does pack in a lot of information in a small space.

Dashboard Implementation Statistics

Tags: Dashboard Implementation, Dashboarding, Companies choosing a dashboard

Homework: Prepare yourself now for a bright career in dashboarding. We can’t call you, so you have to call us!! Seriously, this is going to be a hot IT topic everywhere, so get prepared. Start with these books on business intelligence dashboards.

Crime Analysis Dashboard – using mapping and enterprise dashboard techniques to fight crime

Posted on April 19, 2006 by Dashboard Spy

From the folks at integeo.com, we have this demo of an enterprise dashboard for law enforcement agencies to use to map the locations of crimes. The dashboard screenshots featured show graphs by various elements such as dollar value of the crime, status(apprehended, at-large), month, and type (assault, theft, vandalism). There is left-side filtering with the ability to save filters. The dashboards link to the mapping engine which can provide detailed geographic drilldowns and filtering of data points.

Geospatial dashboard

Dashboard Graphics

Map dashboard screenshot

Analysis dashboard

Homework: Spatial analysis and mapping applications are natural tie-ins for enterprise dashboard applications. Crime fighting dashboards are becoming a powerful way to effectively deploy limited law enforcement resources. If you want to learn more about this, check out this somewhat hard-to-find book on Geographic Information Systems and Crime Analysis.

Cellular Telephone Service Management Dashboard – tracking local number portability service level agreements

Posted on April 18, 2006 by Dashboard Spy

Here is a glimpse at a major cellular company's enterprise dashboard for tracking business service levels. Thanks to the Dashboard Spy who sent me the screen. The top section of this screenshot shows the previous day's availability figures for network data, voice and service. The lower portion of this enterprise dashboard features provisioning statistics. I'm a little leery of what I see in this section. Note that the red indications all happen to be OLO (other local operator) SLA alerts. The green service levels happen to be this carrier's numbers. Coincidence or is it really true that it's the "other guy's fault"? Hmm.

Dashboard Screenshot

Remote Server Monitoring Dashboard Screenshot – shows state of system services

Posted on April 18, 2006 by Dashboard Spy

Almost every digital dashboard uses color to indicate KPI states. Often the indicator is a little ball or box that is red, yellow or green. Dashboard designers struggle with end-user clarity issues such as color blindness, printing on a black and white printer, or simply too many different possible states. Thanks to a Dashboard Spy out there interested in server status enterprise dashboards, we have this screenshot of a remote server monitoring panel that has 7 possible states. To deal with the color issue (color blindness or printing on a b/w printer), we see that the red/green/yellow balls have symbols inside of them. There is a “no data” state that is represented by a black ball. The “disconnected” and “stale data” states have different slashes in opposite directions, and the “misconfigured data” ball has a question mark. For further examples of Remote Monitoring, see n-able technologies.

Digital Dashboard

Homework: Usabilty is key when presenting to the end user through a dashboard. Study up on the discipline of usability. Start with these usability books.

Longterm Healthcare Facility Enterprise Dashboard – Screenshots of facility statistics, calendar, billing rates, accounts receivable, financial dashboard

Posted on April 17, 2006 by Dashboard Spy

Thanks to a Dashboard Spy in the healthcare industry, we have these management dashboard screenshots from a nursing home/assisted living facility. The first screenshot shows the main portal where text-based portlets feature summary information such as enterprise statistics, facility statistics, enterprise calendar, industry news and notes regarding operations. The drilldown screenshot shows the financial dashboard on the right hand side with left side navigation for slicing the data across regions. The financial dashboard shows the financial ratios (net margin, operating margin, days cash on hand, debt service coverage, revenue, headcount, etc) for the last 3 months. Average billing rates and accounts receivable have their own sections. The numbers are shown as well as up and down arrows to show trends. On the rightmost side, we have graphs.

Enterprise Dashboards

Balanced Scorecard screenshot

Homework: When dealing with healthcare financial management, how do we juggle compassion and respect for our fellow humans with the realities of corporate management? Learn more about this rigorous field with these healthcare financial management books.

Commercial Airline Executive Dashboard – SAS/GRAPH Implementation for BI Contest

Posted on April 16, 2006 by Dashboard Spy

Enterprise Dashboard Tag: SAS / GRAPH Dashboards

This just in from Robert Allison, a Dashboard Spy reader who is contributing quite a few enterprise dashboards to our little collection here. Thanks!

Here’s another original/unique dashboard I’d like to submit to your collection. This one was created to enter into the b-eye-network’s recent contest for question #4 (their “dashboard” question). Here is the website describing the data & question:
http://www.b-eye-network.com/newsletters/data_viz_contest/data_viz.html

They supply an excel spreadsheet with the underlying data and the following scenario:

You are a consultant who has been hired by a U.S. commercial airlines to design a dashboard for its executives. The information that the executive team wants to monitor has been identified and now its your job to create the dashboard’s visual design. You must try to display all of this information in some manner on a single screen such that the executives will be able to quickly identify anything that needs their attention and then have the means to discern enough about the situation to decide if they can ignore it for now or must perhaps take some action. It is up to you to determine the appropriate manner, level of detail, and means to display each piece of information.

Since the contest deadline was last Friday, I guess it’s safe to show this one in public now For those of you who want a look behind the scenes of my implementation, here is a link to the interactive web output, and the SAS/Graph code used to create it:

http://robslink.com/SAS/b-eye/beye4.htm
http://robslink.com/SAS/b-eye/beye4.sas

Commercial Airline Executive Dashboard

Homework: If you are new to SAS/GRAPH, of just not sure of what it is, check out these books on SAS/GRAPH.

So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s books on enterprise dashboards. His current favorite is Enterprise Dashboards: Design and Best Practices for IT, the only book on actually implementing executive dashboards.

Loan Flow Dashboard Screenshot – deal flow, deal stage, loan application tracking

Posted on April 15, 2006 by Dashboard Spy

From the developers over at the Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) team, we get this screenshot of a loan flow dashboard. The overall deal flow is the main thing to monitor, so I like how the approvals and rejections get those very large numbers. The applications are tracked according to stage in the center. The loan amounts and types are featured in the table on the right.

Deal flow dashboard screenshot

Helpdesk Dashboard Screenshot – tracking SLA, open tickets, urgent tickets, trends

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Dashboard Spy

Dashboard Design Topic: Helpdesk Dashboard

The Remedy helpdesk system now uses dashboard displays (they branded their system as "Flashboards" – see http://www.remedy.com/solutions/coretech/flashboards.htm). Here is a dashboard screenshot of what a help desk manager would be interested in. Note the emphasis on open tickets – by priority, by department and by high/urgent status.

The second screenshot shows how a user flips the view. From the Remedy people on the term "flashboard" – "a visual management tool that allows you to create dashboards that graphically monitor business process performance in real-time. Flashboards automatically monitors critical business indicators and proactively alerts process owners to potential issues. Allows you to graphically monitor your key performance indicators (KPIs) through interactive charts and meters, and also allows you to drill-down into the details of a particular process to understand and review the underlying metrics.

Graphical displays highlight problem areas using color-coding to give you visual alerts that conditions are outside of acceptable ranges. Flashboard alerts can also help you to quickly and expertly re-deploy your resources to optimally resolve current issues and address potential problems."

Enterprise Dashboard Screenshot

Dashboard Screenshot

Help desk dashboards can take many different forms. Web-based dashboards such as these are typical but there are also desktop dashboards that are appearing that specialize in the help desk area. A good helpdesk dashboard should help its users spot, process, and preempt trouble tickets that could otherwise turn into call storms. This can be very successfully accomplished via a desktop dashboard. Think of a desktop dashboard as a “permanent part” of your desktop. It’s a app that acts like a gadget or widget that appears on your desktop when you log in. Simply booting up your machine brings you in contact with your help desk metrics.

Tags: Helpdesk Dashboard, Help Desk Metrics and KPIs

Related Dashboard Example:

Service Level Administration Dashboard from IBM

Video/Audio Streaming Executive Dashboard – monitors traffic, ratings, viewing habits

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Dashboard Spy

Sometimes a helpdesk dashboard takes the form of metrics that are presented directly to the user community. Service level reporting can be a difficult task for the help desk to perform. An automated approach such as a dashboard makes it possible.

The dashboard discussed at http://www.vitalstream.com/macromedia/reporting-dashboard.html provides monitoring of video and audio streams. Agencies would be interested in seeing the performance metrics of their hosted assets. Metrics include network status, file storage, bandwidth, keynote streaming perspective, top 10 files, traffic by geography, flash player version, concurrent viewers, etc. The user can also preview the stream. This is a great way to monitor in real time the efficacy of a marketing event. Think superbowl commercial.

Business Intelligence Dashboard

Do you like what you find on the Dashboard Spy blog? Keep this collection of executive dashboard screenshots going by submitting your screenshots to info aaaatt enterprise-dashboard.com

Also, help this blog grow by linking to this resource from your blog or web site.

Enterprise Dashboard Digest

Examples of Business Dashboards from The Dashboard Spy

Monthly Archives: April 2006