Dashboard

Here's an enterprise dashboard that lets a school district track the demographics of its student and teacher population. This is a hot area right now.

The front page of the June 6, 2006 New York Times has the headline, "Court to Weigh Race as Factor in School Rolls". The article explains: "The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to rule on what measures, if any, public school systems may use to maintain racial balance in individual schools. The eventual decision on whether they can take race into account could affect hundreds of school systems in all areas of the country."

Now we all know that in order to maintain a balance of anything, we must first measure it. Sound familiar? Here's a hot tip for you enterprise dashboard experts out there. Mock up something similar to this dashboard, approach your local school board, and pitch them on why an enterprise dashboard is perfect for this situation.

This enterprise dashboard screenshot is for a high school down in Florida. While not the most gorgeous of designs, it does provide insight into the student gender ratio, the ethnic breakdown, and the test scores. Teacher information in terms of gender and race is available as well.

Homework: If you are not careful, a project like this can turn into a big political mess. All the elements are here to turn this into a powder keg - race, sex, reading test scores, etc. Be politically neutral and don't turn this enterprise dashboard into a tool for one camp or another. Brush up on the social issues with these books on education hotspots.

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.

A Dashboard Spy in the pharmaceutical industry sent me these dashboard screenshots. The first shows the sales performance KPIs of a drug tracked for a particular territory. Typically there is one sales representative per territory per drug in pharm sales, so we are basically looking at the sales numbers for one person on this enterprise dashboard. The right side of the screen shows the territory map and a sales chart. The left side of the dashboard shows sales KPIs such as contacts, calls and sales. There are the typical red/green/yellow visual KPI indicators. The second enterprise dashboard screenshot shows the tracking of physician visits, what this company is calling Target Doctor Activity. There is an extensive color key legend in use. In my opinion, it is over the top and unusable. Who needs 13 different colors? Better to show the data in another way on this dashboard screen. Good luck if you're color blind or print this out on a black and white printer.

Homework: Did you know that pharmaceutical sales representatives don't really sell? Of course, it's the pharmacy that actually sells you the drugs. The pharma rep is charged with increasing the number of prescriptions for his assigned drug in his territory. Learn about the ins and outs with these books on pharmaceutical sales.

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.

How big is your enterprise dashboard? Is it bigger or smaller than this one at AT&T's Global Network Operations Center. I really wonder what is the largest executive dashboard in the world.

I can't make out individual KPIs in the dashboard graphic, but I see that there are graphs, maps and data tables. If you look hard enough, you can make out some red/green/yellow dashboard indicators at the very left side.

Homework: Does size matter? Please keep an eye out for similar real-world, physical enterprise dashboards. I'd like to collect as many graphics of large scale dashboards as possible.

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 on business dashboards.

The recent focus in this dashboarding forum on Excel dashboards has prompted Dashboard Spy emails with links to their favorite enterprise dashboard worksheets. Lynn points us towards this Excel business dashboard. It's a downloadable xls file. As you can see from these dashboard screenshots, there is a data input page and lots of nicely laid out charts. Try it out and compare it to the other Excel-based spreadsheets we've been pointing to. This one has a good set of business KPIs that are particularly helpful to small businesses.

Executive KPIs include:

Sales by Product
Total Sales
Total Sales Budget Over/Under
Cost of Goods Sold
Materials
Labor
Overhead
Operating Expenses
G&A Expenses
Payroll Salaries
Budget
Sales Expenses
Marketing Expenses
Research & Development Expenses
EBIT
Interest income (expense)
Other income (expense)
Total Nonoperating Income (expense)
Income (Loss) Before Taxes
Income Taxes
Net Income (Loss)
Cumulative Net Income (Loss)

Homework: Don't feel bad if you need to review the basics of graphing using Microsoft Excel. Start with these books on excel charts. A good excel charting basics books is Excel Charts for Dummies

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.

Here's a blue sky thought for a real-world, physical dashboard. How about a digital dashboard that is touch sensitive from a table top or from remote locations? Take a look at the DiamondTouch Table. Here are some photos to start you thinking about the digital dashboards of the future. Read this article on how the touch table works.

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 on business dashboards.

Performance dashboards for montoring our schools may become a must-have for school districts in the future. I know that, where I live, each district's school budget vote is of great concern. What is the impact of the always fluctuating budget on student and school performance? An enterprise dashboard may be the perfect solution for teasing out the subtleties of this issue.

Here is a performance dashboard screenshot from pearsonschoolsystems.com, a provider of student information systems. They have put their reports and KPIs in pleasing dashboard layouts.

This performance dashboard allows the review that the district, school and student levels. This home page of the dashboard has a left navigation panel to traverse those levels and a favorite links tree control. On the right side, we have KPI charts. As you can see from the dashboard navigation, there are reports, queries, favorites, maintenance and proficiency profiles.

Homework: If you need a glimpse of how to apply performance measurement to schools and students, take a look at the book, Measuring School Performance And Efficiency. You should also scan this list of books on school performance.

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.